The erosion of freedom rarely happens overnight; its written into law, one ruling at a time. ACLUs Chase Strangio lays bare how the U.S. legal system is failing its people under a growing wave of authoritarianism and systemic rollbacks of civil liberties.
Welcome to AI Decoded, Fast Companys weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. Im Mark Sullivan, a senior writer at Fast Company, covering emerging tech, AI, and tech policy.
This week, Im focusing on a new court filing that sheds more light on the reasons for Sam Altmans ouster from OpenAI two years ago. I also look at Amazons kerfuffle with Perplexity over AI shopping agents, and at another court ruling that using copyrighted data for AI training is fair use.
Sign up to receive this newsletter every week via email here. And if you have comments on this issue and/or ideas for future ones, drop me a line at sullivan@fastcompany.com, and follow me on X (formerly Twitter) @thesullivan.
Two years after OpenAI boardroom drama, a lot is riding on Altmans trustworthiness
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has done more than anyone else to whip up faith and trust that the next industrial revolutionAIis imminent and inevitable. That faith and trust have already loosed hundreds of billions of investment in infrastructure needed to support the transition. Some say the infusion of cash is single-handedly propping up the U.S. stock market, and, by extension, the economy. The faith and trust have moved Washington to all but abandon its oversight role in favor of acting as enabler and cheerleader.
But questions of Altmans trustworthiness wont go away. Some troublesome details about Altmans famous 2023 firing by his board (and subsequent rehiring and board reshuffle) came to light with the recent (unsealed) court filing of part of a deposition of OpenAI cofounder and ex-chief scientist Ilya Sutskever in a case brought against the company by Elon Musk.
At the time of Altmans ouster, the board said that he had kept key facts about the business from them. The board had also considered reports that Altman undermined his executives and pitted them against each other. Sutskever confirmed to attorneys during the seven-hour deposition that he believes Altman lied habitually. He testified that Altman had been pitting Mira Murati, the CTO at the time, against Daniela Amodei, who eventually left with her brother Dario Amodei and others to form Anthropic.
We learn that Altmans alleged behavior wasnt short-term or a reaction to a crisis, but part of a pattern. Sutskever said he and fellow board member Murati had been documenting Altmans indiscretions and preparing to oust him for more than a year before proposing it to the board. (They delayed the firing until Altman loyalists on the board were too few to stop it, Sutskever said.)
One board member, Helen Toner, said a year after departing that OpenAI executives (likely Sutskever and Murati) began talking to the board about the Altman problems in the month before the November 2023 dustup. The two of them suddenly started telling us . . .how they couldnt trust him, about the toxic atmosphere he was creating, Toner said during a TED AI podcast. They used the phrase psychological abuse, telling us they didnt think he was the right person to lead the company to AGI, telling us they had no belief that he could or would change.
Sutskever, in fact, wrote a 52-page-long memo describing Altmans indiscretions (at the request of fellow board member Adam DAngelo, and possibly board members Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley). He wrote another memo about then-president and board chair Greg Brockman, who resigned after Altman was fired.
Toner has offered other examples of Altmans lies of omission, including a failure to tell the board about plans to launch ChatGPT, or that he personally owned the OpenAI startup fund even though he constantly was claiming to be an independent board member with no financial interest in the company, Toner said. Toner added that Altman gave the board inaccurate information about the small number of formal safety processes OpenAI had in place, so the board had no way of knowing how well those safety processes were working. (Toner is an AI safety expert.)
People say that political infighting happens within every company. Thats probably true. People say that CEOs are like politicians; they have to balance competing priorities and personalities within the company, so a certain amount of finessing of the truth is expected. Ill buy that too.
And the context is important. OpenAIs history, and the recent history of generative AI, had a lot to do with setting up the conflict. OpenAI started out as an idealistic little AI lab, but a few years later it made a breakthrough discovery that AI models got predictably smarter as they were supersized and given massive amounts of computing power. Developing frontier AI models became a very expensive undertaking, requiring massive capital. OpenAI had to spend massively to maintain its lead in the frontier model arms race that ensued, and needed consumer and enterprise revenue streams to help pay for it. (CFO Sarah Friar said Wednesday that OpenAI may look to the government to guarantee its infrastructure loans.)
Its not easy to run a business like a nonprofit in that situation. Yet Altman was answering to a nonprofit board of directors. Toner said as much on the TED AI podcast. The board is a nonprofit board that was set up explicitly for the purpose of making sure that the companys public good mission was primary, was coming firstover profits, investor interests, and other things, Toner said on the podcast. Maybe something had to give.
But . . .
But if the CEO was (or is) hiding truths from the board, something is wrong. Given the potential risks of AI, its disturbing that one of Altmans lies of omission, according to Toner, concerned safety measures. Superhuman AI doesnt care about the corporate structure of its creators. If not responsibly aligned and governed, its potential for doing harm is the same.
Amazon to Perplexity: Keep your agents out of our market
Amazon is apparently not ready for the AI agent revolution. Amazon accused Perplexity of computer fraud after the AI company’s Comet browser allowed users to search for and purchase items on Amazon’s platform. Amazon believes Perplexity needs permission from the e-commerce giant to let users do that. Its attorneys sent Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas a cease-and-desist, saying, in effect, that the Comet shopping agents are no longer welcome on Amazon.
Were in the early innings of AI agents. Some of the first consumer agents, Perplexity included, can navigate e-commerce websites and even make purchases. In the future agents may routinely do our business by interacting with other agents using a secure agent-to-agent interfaceno need for a traditional web interface at all.
Perplexity says Amazon sent an “aggressive legal threat” via a cease-and-desist letter dated October 31, demanding the company stop enabling purchases through its Comet Assistant. Amazon’s lawyers say that Perplexity lacks authorization to access Amazon user accounts or account details using what they described as “disguised or obscured” AI agents. Amazon has already taken steps in recent months to block external AI agents from OpenAI, Google, Meta, and others from crawling product information at its website.
Perplexity accused Amazon of “bullying,” and argued that a tool that makes shopping easier for the consumer can only benefit the e-commerce giant. Perplexity suggested that Amazon is more focused on manipulating shopper decisions by showing ads, injecting upsells and confusing offers, and pushing sponsored products in search results. Amazon says Perplexity’s agents hurt shoppers by skipping over personalized product recommendations, and potentially not displaying the fastest available delivery speeds for customers. Amazon and Perplexity did not respond to a request for comment.
In theory, Amazon could change its terms of service to more explicitly ban third-party shopping agents from its site. But what if such agents create real value (time savings) for consumers? Can Amazon easily ban some agents but not others?
U.K. court says AI companies can use copyrighted material to train models
The AI industry has notched another legal win for its practice of scraping copyrighted digital content from the web and using it to train AI models. Getty Images filed suit in the High Court of Justice of England and Wales, claiming that Stability AI violated copyright when it downloaded millions of Getty photos without permission for the purpose of training its Stable Diffusion image generator. Judge Joanna Smith ruled this week that since the Stable Diffusion model didnt store or reproduce the Getty images it cant be said to have copied the images under U.K. copyright law. The court also declared that Getty would have to drop the copyright claim in the U.K. court because the training didnt physically happen within its jurisdiction. Getty also filed its complaint in the U.S., in the Southern District of New York, but that trial is still ongoing.
Neil Chilson, former chief technologist for the FTC and currently head of AI Policy with the Abundance Institute, called the decision “consistent with the nature of the technology and a successful result for continued AI innovation.
More AI coverage from Fast Company:
AI is going to be a game changer for Black Friday
AI hardware is reinventing the humble dictaphone
Here are the best mobile AI apps
Stability AI largely wins U.K. court battle against Getty Images
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Today, institutional landlordsthose owning more than 1,000 homesremain a relatively small part of the national single-family housing market. They own less than 1.0% of the total U.S. single-family housing stock and have accounted for only about 0.3% of transactions over the past three years. Yet, two decades ago, they didnt even really exist.
When Blackstone began buying single-family rentals in 2011, there wasnt a single firm that owned at least 1,000 U.S. single-family homes. By late 2016, Blackstones fund, Invitation Homeswhich the firm later took public in 2017 and fully exited by 2019had grown its portfolio to nearly 50,000 single-family rentals. As of the end of Q3 2025, Invitation Homes wholly owned 86,139 single-family rentals.
Institutional funds buying at the bottom of the housing crash, from 2011 to 2013, marked the birth of the modern institutional single-family rental asset class.
Sean Dobson, CEO and chairman of the Amherst Groupwhich, according to Parcl Labs, owns at least 42,973 single-family rentalssaw that shift firsthand. After the federal government tightened lending, the housing bubble burst, and single-family homes began selling below replacement cost, the government was practically begging institutional capital to step into the market around 2010, believing they could serve as a shock absorber.
Dobson illustrates the point by noting, When we [Amherst] first started this [single-family rental] business, we had a handshake to buy 50,000 houses from Fannie Mae in one trade. While that trade didnt occur, it illustrates the backdrop at the time.
On Friday, Dobson will be among the speakers at ResiDay 2025a one-day conference hosted by ResiClub in New York City.
I did a pre-interview with Dobson (the full video is posted on YouTube). Below are some of his key takeaways.
National home prices: Grinding sideways, with affordability as the constraint
Dobson emphasized that the housing market is unlikely to see dramatic national home price swings in the near term. Neither another national boom, nor crash.
He admits theres some downward pressure on home prices, given the affordability environment were in, however, theres not enough resale supply hitting the market to actually manifest a national level crash like 2007-2011.
According to Dobson:
Home prices we think would be lower if there are more sellers, obviously. But there’s good reason there aren’t more sellers, right? So many people got such low interest rate mortgages that at a time when the demand would naturally fall from rising interest rates, rising interest rates also caused the [new listings] supply to fall.
I think the overall message is that we’re on the lookout for something that changes the velocity of this whole thing and [we] can’t find it. We spent a lot of time on the Airbnb guys. I thought those guys might be the weak hands, because it’s like, who has to sell? And we have a pretty good model on how supply affects home prices. But even when you just radically change supply, it moves home prices [down] in single digits we think you’re looking at a decade of difficulties for people to get into buying a home.
That’s why we think we’re talking about really a next decade of a lot of demand for rental, because it’s the choice of, how do I get the size, how do I get the features that come with that home, like the school location? And that’s how long we think it’s going to take for what we would see as sort of long-term depth of some of the standards for affordability to be recaptured, because we think it has to come from income growth. And that’s staring in the face of all this business and AI, which [some] people are arguing might be driving [real incomes] down [in the future].
Fixing affordability starts with housing credit reform
The further the Pandemic Housing Boom fades into the rearview mirrorand as national income growth continues to outpace national home price growthDobson believes national housing affordability will gradually improve.
That could be sped up, he says, if some of lending tightening done during and following the Great Financial Crisis were un-done.
His argument isnt to recreate the reckless lending of the mid-2000s, but to reintroduce responsible credit risk-taking and allow back in some of the lower credit homebuyers that were in the market in, say, the 1980s and 1990s.
In Dobsons view, if lending were loosened to allow some of those lower credit score homebuyers back into the market, it wouldnt magically improve affordability overnight; however, it would create a steady stream of housing demand for builders who could produce more lower-end single-family homesor even manufactured homesthat werent bilt in the years following the Great Financial Crisis. He believes that would improve affordability over time.
Says Dobson:
We get consulted by governors, by senior people in the federal government. Everyone kind of wants the playbook: Tell me what to do and I’ll fix it. And we tell them [to] make more subprime mortgages. And they tend to fold up their notebooks and head on… People are frustrated, right? People are super frustrated because you have this expectation that: I did all these things, and now I should be able to buy a house, and I can’t. You want to blame somebody, right? And if you see me [Amherst] buying it, well, you’re like, well, it must be his fault, so I get itI think it [that thinking] is dangerous.
They [homebuilders] don’t have demand [from that lower credit score homebuyers like they used to], and they don’t have demand because their customers don’t have financing. And they [some sidelined buyers] don’t have financing because the mortgage market doesn’t take credit risk like [it used to]… So what we [Amherst] provide is a solution today.
Tightened credit boxed out homebuyers and helped draw institutional capital into the housing market
Dobson says the typical Amherst tenant has a credit score too low to qualify for a mortgage in todays market. Without single-family rental options, many of those households wouldnt be able to live in the same neighborhoods or school districts they do now, he argues.
That challenge reflects a broader shift in the mortgage market. In Q1 1999, borrowers in the bottom 10th percentile of mortgage credit scores had scores of 597. By Q3 2025, that threshold had risen to 660, reflecting that many lower-credit households had been locked out of homeownership following the bust, Dobson says.
In Dobsons view, those tighter lending standardsimplemented after the housing bust that began in 2006helped pave the way for institutional investors like Amherst to step in and fill the gap through single-family rentals.
Says Dobson:
I sat with Chairman Bernanke, I sat with Yellen, and I begged them to try to get in the way of Dodd-Frank, because I knew what was going to happen, and we lost that. I said, Okay, well, we’re going to get these families in these houses some way, and we have a lease and we have financing, we can operate the real estate. So let’s get the people in the homes and get their kids in the schools, and then let all the wizards figure out, like, whats the better solution? Because today, there isn’t one until someone with a 625 FICO can go borrow money at about the same rate that you and I can borrow at, there isn’t a better solution. And so that’s, you know, if you want to blame somebody, it’s the knee jerk, explainable, but too long in place reaction to the subprime mortgage crisis.
Greater homebuilding activity is helping improve affordability more quickly in Florida and Texas
During our conversation, I asked him for his thoughts on the current regional housing market variationspecifically, why pockets of Florida and Texas have weakened more than markets in the Midwest and Northeast.
According to Dobson:
The common theme amongst the markets that are retracing? So Austin, you mentioned Jacksonville, which is not quite as bad Western Floridathe Tampa Bay area, Cape Coral has been really, been really tough. I would say the common theme is those are places [where] it’s pretty easy to build, and as home prices moved above, kind of their construction costs, they naturally kind of tend back down. And so those places, the market did what the market is supposed to do, right? Prices were rising and rising quickly, and homebuilders came in and they built a lot of supply, even in a place like Dallas. So we [Amherst] tend to spend [time looking at local data]because we’re like you [ResiClub], were in the housing market [data] all day, every day. So we don’t really do that much work on like the U.S. housing market. We do work on much smaller micro footprints. But if you take a place like DallasDallas overall [in aggregate], seems like it’s okay, healthy, not great, [but] not weak. But if you bifurcate the homes by vintage year, and look at their price movements, then Dallas looks a lot like Cape Coral [in certain areas]. The new home construction market [areas] in Dallas looks a lot like Cape Coral. So builders came outthey did, you know, getting land permitted, getting lots of them platted, getting horizontals in all takes time. So there’s always a lag between when the housing market really wants to buy the homes and when builders can deliver them. And that oftentimes [it] creates too much supply [at once] trying to squeeze through a channel that [also has] waning demand.
Institutional single-family homebuying has slowedcould it accelerate again?
At the height of the Pandemic Housing Boom, institutional homeownersthose owning at least 1,000 single-family homesmade up an all-time high of 2.4% of home purchases in Q2 2022, according to John Burns Research and Consulting.
That period, at the tail end of the boom, was when yields were particularly attractive as borrowing costs were ultra-low, home prices were soaring, and rents were climbing rapidly.
However, since mortgage rates spiked and capital markets shifted, their share has fallen to around 0.3% of transactions over the past three years. The math isnt as favorable now.
What, if anything, could pull more institutional capital back into the single-family housing market?
According to Dobson:
We really think the answer to that question comes in this investor adoption question, right? Will state pension funds allocate and scale to single-family rental?
The time that we’ve had to operate the [single-family] real estate has also made that core investor group aware that you can collect rents [from single-family rentals], you can provide good service, you can operate this as a piece of real estate. That track record is helpful, but the next wave of investing won’t come from the same sources of capital [private equity]. It’ll come from those core investors [like pension funds] finally saying, You know what, a 5% or 6% cash on cash return that outpaces inflation by 50 plus percent every year has a spot in my portfolio and scale.
Drilling for minerals deep in the ocean could have immense consequences for the tiny animals at the core of the vast marine food web and ultimately affect fisheries and the food we find on our plates, according to a new study.Deep-sea mining means drilling the seafloor for “polymetallic nodules” loaded with critical minerals including copper, iron, zinc and more. While not yet commercialized, nations are pursuing deep-sea operations amid rising demand for these minerals in electric vehicles and other parts of the energy transition, as well as for technology and military use.The researchers examined water and waste gathered from a deep-sea mining trial in 2022.
What the study discovered
University of Hawaii researchers studied an area of the Pacific Ocean called the “twilight zone,” about 650-5,000 feet (200-1,500 meters) below sea level. Their peer-reviewed findings, published Thursday in the Nature Communications scientific journal, say mining waste could affect anything from tiny shrimp smaller than .08 inches (2 millimeters) long to fish 2 inches (5 centimeters) long.That’s because, after mining companies bring the mineral-rich nodules up to the surface, they have to release excess sea water, ocean floor dirt and sediment back into the ocean. That creates a murky plume of particles about the same size as the naturally occurring food particles normally eaten by the zooplankton that swim at that depth.That’s a little more than half of the zooplankton in the ocean. If those organisms eat the waste particles what senior study author Brian Popp called “junk food” then that affects 60% of micronekton that eat the zooplankton.And that undernourishment is a problem because these tiny organisms are the food source up the chain ultimately affecting commercially important fish such as mahi mahi or tuna.“Surface fish can dive down deep into the water, they feed on organisms down at depth,” said Michael Dowd, study lead author and oceanography graduate student. “If these organisms down at depth are no longer present because their food web has collapsed, then that can impact higher food webs and more commercial interests.”
Impact on the water and alternative sources
While other research has highlighted the negative environmental impacts from deep-sea mining of nodules, the focus is often the seafloor. This study looks at mid-water.The researchers said more work needs to be done to assess the appropriate quality and depth at which dirty water and sediment from sea mining could be returned to the ocean. But they said returning the excess directly to the ocean floor or at other depths could be just as environmentally disruptive as in the “twilight zone,” only in different ways.Popp said digging up the deep sea might not be necessary, and instead noted alternative sources of metals, including recycling batteries and electronics, or sifting through mining waste and tailings.“If only a single company is mining in one single spot, it’s not going to affect a huge fishery. It’s not going to affect a huge amount of water. But if many companies are mining for many years and outputting a lot of material, this is going to spread across the region,” Dowd said. “And the more mining occurs, the more a problem it could be.”
Where deep-sea mining stands
It might not be viable to simply halt ocean mining. The International Seabed Authority that governs mineral activity beyond national jurisdiction has already granted several contracts for exploration.In the U.S., President Donald Trump has expressed interest in deep-sea mining operations amid tense trade negotiations with China that have limited U.S. access to China’s wide swath of critical minerals. In April, Trump signed an executive order directing the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration to expedite the permitting process for companies to mine the ocean floor, and in May, the administration said it would consider selling leases to extract minerals off the South Pacific island of American Samoa. Last month, NOAA sent a draft rule to the White House to streamline operations.Environmental groups have advocated against deep-sea mining, citing not only the direct harm to wildlife and parts of the sea, but also the disturbance of planet-warming carbon dioxide that is currently sequestered in the ocean and on its floor.“It was well laid out in the study that the impacts wouldn’t necessarily be just the depth that the plume is released,” said Sheryl Murdock, a deep-sea postdoctoral researcher at Arizona State University who was not involved in the study. “The question being: Is it worth a few minerals to potentially destroy the way that the oceans function?”Diva Amon, a marine biologist and postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara, praised the research for examining potential consequences.“All of this could lead to species illness, species movement, species death. And depending on the scale of this, that could have graver repercussions, like species extinctions,” said Amon, who wasn’t involved in the study but has previously worked with some of the researchers.“There’s a lot more research that needs to be done to be able to make an informed decision about how to manage this industry, if it does start, in a way that will prevent, essentially, serious harm to the ocean and ocean ecosystem.”
Alexa St. John is an Associated Press climate reporter. Follow her on X: @alexa_stjohn. Reach her at ast.john@ap.org.
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Alexa St. John, Associated Press
Over the last two years, the value of content has collapsed. Thanks to the LLM revolution, the internet is drowning in an avalanche of indistinguishable output: an endless parade of fast-food writing, recycled reports, and SEO-bait fluff optimized for algorithms instead of people. Thats why the only competitive moat left is the human story.
For business leaders, this creates an urgent mandate: Storytelling is no longer a marketing tactic. Its a strategic business imperativethe only reliable engine for changing minds and shifting behaviors.
If your brands narrative isnt uniquely human and demonstrably ownable, it will vanish in the churn. Heres how to find the stories only your company can tell, and why theyre your last true moat.
RECOGNIZE THE NEW DISCOVERY REALITY
Its tempting to see generative AI as a shortcut to content volume. But when every competitor can churn out a thousand posts, the value of each piece approaches zero.
Audiences know this, and theyre tuning out. Trust in the media is near-historic lows. Our Brand Expectations Index shows that 81% of the general public and 84% of knowledge workers trust direct communication from companies, whether in podcasts, videos, or in-depth articles, nearly as much as they trust local news.
Even the best SEO playbooks or algorithm hacks are no longer enough. The only thing that cuts through is a story that sparks a gut-level connection.
Your mandate: Stop publishing for the algorithm. Start crafting narratives so bold, so human, that your audience chooses to pay attention.
EMBRACE THE WHITE SPACE MANDATE
This isnt creativity for creativitys sake. Its about strategic differentiation. The first step is proving your story has true, ownable value.
Thats the white space mandate: Use data and rigorous analysis to find the strategic gaps your competitors havent filled.
Technology for insight, not content. Audit the media and competitor landscape. Map where theyre over-indexing and identify the questions audiences are still asking but not getting answered. Thats the white spacethe open territory where a new conversation can take root.
The power of the pivot. This process often forces a shift. The narrative your CEO thinks is critical may be saturated. White space analysis reveals the sharper angle, the uncomfortable, or the unexpected perspective thats necessary to stand out.
Ive seen companies discover that the message they were clinging to was indistinguishable from five rivals, while the story that truly set them apart was hiding in plain sight.
FIND THE UN-GENERATABLE NARRATIVE
Once youve identified white space, the real work begins: filling it with something AI cannot generate.
Thats the un-generatable narrativea story born of lived experience, not scraped data. You uncover it through what I call story-mining, deliberate conversations with leaders, employees, and stakeholders to unearth personal conviction, anecdotes, and hidden ambition.
The anecdote as anchor. AI can summarize your mission statement; it cannot recreate the founders pivotal failure or the late-night insight that led to a breakthrough. These details are specific, emotional, and unforgettable. They create a narrative that is impossible for a machine to fabricate.
Conviction is contagious. When a story is proven to be unique through data and delivered with authentic conviction, it stops being mere communication. It becomes a persuasive argument capable of moving markets and shifting behaviors.
THE ONLY FOUNDATION FOR TRUST
In an era of content saturation, brands can no longer compete in volume. They must compete with meaning.
The stories that will power your business forward arent the ones easily generated. Theyre the ones painstakingly discovered, strategically proven, and deeply human.
Because in a world of infinite content, meaning is your only engine for trust.
Tyler Perry is the co CEO of Mission North.
Tech is shifting faster than the models we built our impact on. And that means even thriving nonprofits face a choice: Keep optimizing what worksor rebuild for what’s coming.
Back in June, our leadership team made a decision that felt both risky and obvious: Change a strategy that was still working to accommodate an AI future. Wed been writing and speaking for years about the need for the social sector to stop talking and start doingand we realized it was time to take our own advice.
For the last five years, our organization has helped nonprofits worldwide build tech solutions in partnership with leading tech companies. It worked. It made a difference. But by 2025, it became clear: What brought us to this point won’t take us to where we want to go.
We could keep matching tech needs with builders. Or we could bet on something biggerteach nonprofits how to prepare for an AI-native future, so they can be capable of building and scaling impact themselves. We chose the latter.
A BET ON THE FUTURE
In recent weeks, four major reports were released: The Philanthropic Reset, AI for Humanity, Accelerate Whats Possible, and AI With Purpose. Four different sources, same message: Nonprofits are ready for AIbut the systems around them are not.
The data is clear:
84% of AI-powered nonprofits lack funding to further develop and scale AI solutions.
87% of funders admit they don’t understand their grantees’ tech capacity.
90% of nonprofits don’t fund AI literacy or infrastructure.
And yet, the organizations seeing the biggest results are those that fine-tune AI with their own data, test quickly, and integrate community feedback. The takeaway is simple but uncomfortable: The real bottleneck isn’t technologyit’s capacity.
That realization pushed us to rebuild not just our programs, but our mental model of what “tech for good” means in an AI-native world.
FROM ONE-OFFS TO ECOSYSTEM
For years, the social sector has measured success by the number of pilots launched. But in the AI era, pilots don’t scale. Systems do.
So, we’ve started building what we call an AI enablement ecosystema space where nonprofits can build, learn, and scale responsibly, together.
That includes initiatives that help organizations prototype their first AI tools and build internal capacity, support proven social solutions so they can scale through responsible AI use, and a venture-style lab that develops shared infrastructure for nonprofits.
But this isn’t about our model. It’s about a broader shiftfrom delivering solutions to building systems that deliver.
WHAT “AI-NATIVE” REALLY MEANS
Being AI-native doesn’t mean asking ChatGPT to write your next grant report. It means processes, interventions or even full organizations that make the most out of the promise and benefits of AI.
Imagine a three-person nonprofit running a program that today would require a staff of 30. AI handles logistics, data analysis, and reporting, while humans focus on relationships, trust and connection. That’s not that far away. It’s already happening.
And it forces usleaders, funders, and buildersto rethink what kind of infrastructure we’re really financing. Are we funding innovation, or the capacity that makes innovation possible?
Our bet is simple: In the next two to three years, it will be exponentially easier for nonprofits to build and scale with AI. But for that to be safe and responsible, we’ll need a shared layer of infrastructurecapacity, governance, and collaboration that helps changemakers build with confidence.
Weve spent years telling the sector to stop talking and start doing. This is why were doing it ourselves. Because in the end, doing the right thing isnt about keeping what works. Its about having the courage to rebuild while things still work. And thats exactly what the moment demands and the technology enables.
Jacek Siadkowski is the founder and CEO of Tech to the Rescue.
New York City has elected a democratic socialist as its next mayor. Across the internet, progressive internet users are hopescrolling for the first time in years and proudly declaring: woke is back.
With his victory, Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani will become the citys first Muslim mayor, the first of South Asian heritage, the first born in Africa, and the youngest in more than a century.
During his victory speech, Mamdani reaffirmed his support for workers rights, immigrants rights, and the rights of all vulnerable New Yorkers, including LGBTQ people.
BREAKING: WOKE IS BACK!, one X user posted. THERE ARE 25 GENDERS. WERE GOING TO TRANS THE ECONOMY. DEI FOR EVERY CHILD. AND WERE RELEASING THE EPSTEIN FILES!!!
Zohran win got me feeling so woke i might detransition just to transition again, another joked. TRANSGENDER FOR EVERYBODY WINS AGAIN, wrote another.
BREAKING: WOKE IS BACK! THERE ARE 25 GENDERS. WE'RE GOING TO TRANS THE ECONOMY. DEI FOR EVERY CHILD. AND WE'RE RELEASING THE EPSTEIN FILES!!!— Keith Edwards (@keithedwards) November 5, 2025
If i was zohran i would choose this precise moment to come out as a proud bisexual, another quipped.
For the online left, long disillusioned with American politics and a Demoractic party they feel no longer speaks for them, on Tuesday night, something shifted.
if i was zohran i would choose this precise moment to come out as a proud bisexual— meredith (@dietz_meredith) November 5, 2025
Mamdani won over the vast majority of voters ages 18 to 29 (78%) and 30 to 44 (66%), according to exit polls from NBC. He also received 82% of LGBTQ+ vote, compared to just 15% for Cuomo.
People are feeling so hopeful, they are proudly libbing out on main. For the uninitiated, to lib out has been part of the political lexicon for a few years, and means to abandon cynicism, even just for a night, and indulge instead in hope and optimism.
LIBBING TF OUT— Democrats (@TheDemocrats) November 5, 2025
Forgive me father for I am libbing the fuck out, one wrote. Sorry to lib out but for so many of us this is the very first time we cast a vote that wasnt framed to us as ‘the lesser of two evils,’ another posted. We actually believed in someone, canvassed for him, and saw himwin??? like??? Somethingworked???
One simply put: New York City you have shocked the world by voting for a normal guy instead of a deranged pervert.
Even the official X account of the Democratic Party tried, too late for some, to get in on the act. LIBBING TF OUT, read its post.
Mamdani, speaking to supporters in Brooklyn after his victory, said: “today we have spoken in a clear voice: hope is alive.
After Kamala Harriss loss to Trump in the 2024 presidential election, many were quick to blame wokeness for his return. Woke is broke, wrote Maureen Dowd for The New York Times. Former White House Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, writing for the Washington Post, suggested debates over pronouns, bathroom access and renaming schools lost Democrats the vote. He added campaigns of joy in an era of rage dont win elections.
Tell that to the smiling democratic socialist, Muslim, south asian mayor of New York City.
As the longest federal government shutdown in U.S. history drags on, federal workers are left in financial limboand the airline industry is feeling the strain as flight delays and cancellations mount at the nation’s busiest airports.
In the midst of this upheaval, American Airlines has announced small reductions in management and support roles at its Texas headquarters, raising the stakes at a particularly challenging moment.
According to the Associated Press, the move is described as a way to align staffing with current operational needs and boost organizational efficiency. A company statement emphasized that investments will continue in other areas supporting long-term strategic goals.
While American Airlines hasnt disclosed exact numbers, Bloomberg reports that the cuts could affect hundreds of corporate jobs, mainly mid-level management and non-union support staff across IT, communications, and finance.
Fast Company reached out to American Airlines for a comment.
Industry and economic pressures
The staffing cuts follow a quarterly net loss of $114 million for American Airlines.
The company’s shares (Nasdaq: AAL) were down roughly 21% year to date as of Wednesday’s close.
Meanwhile, broader economic concerns are weighing on consumers, dampening potential demand for leisure travel. A recent AP-NORC poll reveals that many Americans fear a recession, and rising tariffs under the Trump administration could further drive up costs.
A growing number of companies across industries have announced corporate job cuts in recent weeks, including Starbucks, Nestlé, UPS, Amazon, and others. According to a report Thursday from Challenger, Gray & Christmas, layoff announcements in October were up 175% compared to the same period last year.
Prolonged shutdown raises adds weight
The government shutdown has exacerbated operational challenges. Some 50,000 TSA officers and 13,000 air traffic controllers have been working without pay, contributing to flight delays and cancellations.
Bryan Bedford, administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), told Fox Business that 20 to 40% of controllers at the 30 largest airports have failed to show up for work.
On Wednesday, the FAA said it now plans to reduce flight capacity by 10% at dozens of airports beginning later this week.
Looking ahead
Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned that if the shutdown continues another week, the FAA may be forced to close parts of the national airspace, potentially causing mass chaos.
The remarks immediately rattled investors, sending shares of American Airlines, Southwest, Delta, and United downward.
Experts note that because the air traffic control system is highly interconnected, partial airspace restrictions could have far-reaching effects nationwide. Sheldon Jacobson, a University of Illinois professor, explained in an interview with Reuters, You cant simply close one sector without it affecting the rest of the country.
American Airlines and other major carriers are particularly worried about the upcoming holiday season, traditionally a peak travel period. In a statement late Wednesday, American Airlines again urged Congress to reach a resolution and end the shutdown.
Qatar Airways will sell its stake in Hong Kong-based Cathay Pacific Airways in a share buyback valued at $896 million, the companies announced, ending the Qatari carrier’s eight-year involvement with the airline.The announcement came late Wednesday in a stock market filing by Cathay Pacific, which saw its shares gain 4.2% on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange on Thursday.Under the agreement, Qatar Airways will sell all of its holdings, which represent 9.57% of Cathay Pacific stock. The airline’s other major shareholders are Swire Pacific and Air China. The plan is subject to shareholder approval.“The buy-back reflects our strong confidence in the future of the Cathay Group and underscores our commitment to the development of the Hong Kong international aviation hub,” Cathay Group chairman Patrick Healy said in a statement announcing the sale.Qatar Airways, a state-owned airline flying out of the sprawling Hamad International Airport in Doha, did not acknowledge the sale itself. However, the Cathay Pacific statement included a comment from its CEO Badr Mohammed al-Meer saying the move represented the airline’s “disciplined approach to portfolio management and our commitment to delivering sustainable value for our shareholders.”“Following a period of record profitability and strong performance, this decision is part of a proactive strategy to optimize our investments and position the group for long-term growth,” al-Meer said. Qatar Airways did not respond to questions from The Associated Press on Thursday.Qatar Airways’ decision to divest likely had to do in part with its “limited strategic influence afforded by (its) minority stake,” DBS Bank analysts Tabitha Foo and Jason Sum said in an email.The latest transaction also “further consolidates ownership among (Cathay’s) key shareholders, Swire Pacific and Air China”, they added, helping strengthen the firms’ strategic control of the airline.Qatar Airways bought its stake in Cathay Pacific in 2017 in a deal valued at the time around $662 million. Back then, Cathay Pacific faced financial losses and layoffs amid increasing competition from other airlines. The Hong Kong carrier posted a $1.2 billion profit in the last fiscal year.Qatar Airways, along with Abu Dhabi-based Emirates and Dubai’s Emirates, are long-haul carriers that link East-West travel. Their location on the Arabian Peninsula between Europe and Asia have made them a key link in global transit. Qatar Airways also got a boost when the small, energy-rich nation hosted soccer’s 2022 FIFA World Cup.Qatar Airways had struggled during a yearslong boycott by four Arab nations and the coronavirus pandemic. However, it soared to a $2.15 billion profit in its last fiscal year. Qatar Airways also has holdings in International Airlines Group, LATAM Airlines Group, China Southern Airlines, Virgin Australia and South Africa’s Airlink.
Associated Press business writer Chan Ho-him in Hong Kong contributed to this report.
Jon Gambrell, Associated Press
There was a moment when Snapchat looked like it was destined to be a relic in social media history, losing users and missing its own revenue forecasts.
Not today. Snap, the apps parent company, announced $1.51 billion in revenue as part of its third-quarter earnings on Wednesday, November 5. That figure was a 10% jump year-over-year (YOY) and beat Wall Streets prediction of $1.49 billion, according to consensus estimates cited by CNBC.
Snapchat beat Wall Streets expected global daily active users (477 million versus 476 million) and global average revenue per user ($3.16 versus $3.13). Both figures were also an improvement YOY.
Snap also announced a stock repurchase program for up to $500 million.
Alluding to its reported $93.4 million free cash flow, Snap explained, The goal of the program is to utilize the companys strong balance sheet to opportunistically offset a portion of the dilution related to the issuance of restricted stock units to employees as part of the overall compensation program designed to foster an ownership culture.
Snap partners with Perplexity AI
All of these figures certainly play a part in Snaps shares (NYSE: SNAP) spiking more than 20% after-hours and into premarket trading on Thursday.
But another announcement likely factored in. Alongside its quarterly earnings report, Snap shared that Perplexity AI will pay it $400 million in cash and equity as part of a coming partnership.
Starting in early 2026, Perplexity will appear in our chat interface for Snapchatters around the world, Evan Spiegel, Snap cofounder and CEO, said in an earnings call. Through this integration, Perplexitys AI-powered answer Engine will let Snapchatters ask questions and get clear conversational answers drawn from verifiable sources, all within Snapchat.
Spiegel added that Snap wont sell advertising against the responses but that Perplexity could help drive additional subscribers.
Notably, Spiegel also shared that Perplexity’s focus on trusted and verifiable sources really aligns with our values and makes them a good fit for our community.
News organizations such as Dow Jones and the New York Post have sued Perplexity for alleged copyright infringement, while Reddit sued the company last month for allegedly illegally scraping millions of users comments for commercial gain.
In a lengthy statement posted to Reddit last month, Perplexity has disputed claims of misconduct.
Last week, the company signed a multi-year licensing deal with Getty Images, allowing the former to display Gettys content across its AI tools.
