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It was in the quiet of the summer when a new president at Louisiana State University said the school would lay off 25 administrators, including several who were high in the campus hierarchy, and shift the savings to faculty hiring and research. Transformational change, the president, Wade Rousse, called it. He was streamlining operations and finding efficiencies so the university can focus on its faculty. The move got limited attention outside Baton Rouge. But similar layoffs have been happening at universities and colleges nationwide in what may be a little-noticed tipping point in U.S. higher education. A decades-long increase in the number of employees on campuses who dont actually teachdisparaged by critics as administrative bloatis starting to reverse, new data suggests. The number of noninstructional employees at U.S. universities and collegesthe many people on campuses who dont actually teachfell last year more than it has at any time in at least the last decade, according to the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources, or CUPA-HR. And while the newly reported CUPA-HR figures cover only through the end of 2025, universities and colleges have continued to lay off noninstructional employees since then. Another source, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, now projects limited employment growth for postsecondary administrators, which it says will be slower than for other occupations. There are several caveats to these clues. The CUPA-HR survey is limited to the roughly 1,000 public and nonprofit universities and colleges that agreed to participate, for instance. The association cautioned against generalizing across the large variety of higher education institutions; noted that past downturns in staffing often have been followed by increases; and said it might be too early to draw conclusions about trends. But it shouldnt come as a surprise that universities are resorting to layoffs across their workforces as they try to lower spending in the face of domestic and international student enrollment declines and federal funding cuts, says Kevin McClure, professor of higher education and chair of the Department of Educational Leadership at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. Institutions are shrinking. Some are closing. Some simply have fewer students, so are having to contract, McClure says. Those types of situations are often where layoffs are experienced or reorganizations happen. Since its typically harder to eliminate faculty than staff because of tenure and student demand for particular majors, he says, the newest layoffs are most likely to affect employees and staff who arent as protected. Among administrators laid off at Louisiana State were the chief financial officer; a vice president who handled discrimination complaints; and 16 writers, video producers, and photographers in the marketing and communications office. The University of Utah has announced it will eliminate as many as 855 noninstructional positions over the next year. The University of Minnesota cut 230 noninstructional jobs through layoffs and attrition. The University of Maryland laid off 84 staffers, eliminated vacant jobs, and froze hiring. Private, nonprofit universities and colleges of all sizes also have been trimming their administrative ranks. Johns Hopkins University laid off 110 workers and imposed a hiring freeze. The New School in New York City shed 68 noninstructional employees. At Baker University in Kansas, 21 staff positions were eliminated, 27 others were frozen, and the president and other administrators took pay cuts. Emerson College in Boston laid off 12 administrators. Even Harvard University eliminated 165 noninstructional jobs, including the director of its writing center. In most of these cases, the numbers represent small fractions of the noninstructional workforce, which accounts for more than half of all employees on campuses. But its encouraging that there are any cuts at all, says Peter Wood, president of the conservative National Association of Scholars, which has been critical of administrative bloat and of diversity, equity, and inclusion offices, many of which are among those now being stripped of staff. There have been decades of increases in the numbers of noninstructional employees, attracting criticism at the highest levels and on social media accounts devoted entirely to making fun of higher educations middle managers. Colleges began to see themselves as providing this very broad suite of services, all of which were personnel-intensive, Wood saysathletics, housing, dining, security, transportation, mental health counseling, disability support, antidiscrimination efforts, information technology, data collection, fundraising, sustainability. Some of these functions were expanded as students showed up who were not prepared for college-level work and needed more help. Some were in response to real or perceived demands from consumers for amenities that required additional staff, or were driven by intensifying competition and the race to rise up the college rankings. Institutions also contend that their ever-growing workforces were required to comply with government red tape, though that has proven not to be as big a factor as theyve said. The administrative workforce just grew and grewoften, Wood says, at the expense of academic functions. In the process, administrative bloat became one of those rare issues that unites critics of higher education with faculty members, says Robert Kelchen, head of the Department of Educational Leadership and Policy Studies at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, who has studied it. A faculty committee convened at Yale University to consider why higher education has lost so much public trust cited administrative bloat as one of the reasons. It said that even determining how many administrators there were at Yale proved remarkably difficult. That in itself was a finding, the committee said in its report, released in April. The university should be able to answer a straightforward question: What share of its resources is devoted to its core academic functions, and what share is not? Universities and colleges have layers of bloated administration for which students and taxpayers are forced to foot the bill, U.S. Under Secretary of Education Nicholas Kent told a White House roundtable last year. Students, families, and taxpayers are being asked to pay more and more each year to support rising institutional and administrative expenditures that often have little to do with actual learning, he said. The number of noninstructional employees on campuses is hard to definitively connect with what students pay. Another analysis of federal data, by the American Council of Trustees and Alumni, or ACTA, however, shows that administrative costs per student at public universities have generally been falling since their last peak, which came just before the COVID-19 pandemic. That analysis covers the period through 2024, the most recent for which the figure is available. This seems really like a very stark correction, says Armand Alacbay, ACTAs chief of staff and senior vice president of strategy. Gallup surveys find that fewer than 4 in 10 Americans have confidence in higher education, down from nearly 6 in 10 in 2015; cost edges out perceived political agendas as the top reason, Alacbay says, noting, Thats whats really animating this whole discussion of administrative bloat, is the price of the product reaching an unsustainable level. The number of full-time administrators per 100 students at the top 200 universities that award doctoral degrees increased 39% from 1993 to 2007more than twice as much as the number of students or facultyaccording to one widely cited 2010 report by the conservative Goldwater Institute. Another study picked up the trail in 2012 and looked at 1,529 public and private four-year colleges and universities. It found that administrative staffing continued to grow faster than instructional staffing through at least 2018, even after colleges and universities responded to the 2008 recession by promising to cut costs, and during a period when enrollment was declining. Universities say their nonfaculty staff include employees in such areas as fundraising and sustainability, meaning they presumably raise or save money. Many others are in student services or provide technology support. There are indications that some schools are cutting employees who provide those functions, too, potentially resulting in fewer support services for students. The University of Southern California has laid off academic advisers. The University of California, Los Angeles, cut 27 information technology workers. Indiana University Bloomington laid off 13 IT staffers. Higher education should be thoughtful about where its making cuts, says McClure, the University of North Carolina professor. Criticism of administrators paints things in broad brush strokes, he says. Lets be specific. What positions are we actually talking about that we need or dont need? We should have that conversation. Universities and colleges are in a different era now, McClure adds. And its going to require a different kind of staffing. Contact writer Jon Marcus at 212-678-7556, jmarcus@hechingerreport.org or jpm.82 on Signal. This story was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for our Higher Education newsletter.
Category:
E-Commerce
For much of the last year, security cameras sold by the tech firm Flock Safety have been blacked out, painted over, even wrapped in trash bags. Roundly criticized for ushering in high-tech surveillance, the companys automated license plate readers (ALPRs) have not only been broken, but banned by cities across the nation. However, at the same time the ALPR backlash has been brewing, a contributor to financial challenges for the company, Flock has seen a different part of its business literally take flight. The companys line of drones has become a key part of its current revenue and sales pitch. Flock founder and CEO Garrett Langley told the All-In Podcast in September that drone tech is the companys fastest-growing business unit right now. Founded in 2017, Flock is valued at $8.4 billion. Langley said drone tech is set to account for nearly half of its future revenue. At one point, the company was in negotiations to supply drones to police in Chula Vista, California, the San Diego suburb that has been on the forefront of drone policing. While local law enforcement often praise the technologythe San Francisco police hold up the tech as a key aspect in a recent drop in the crime ratethe increasing deployments of drones are worrying civil rights advocates about the balance of privacy versus security. The public conversation hasn’t caught up to how much of a problem drones are at this point, says Beryl Lipton, senior investigative researcher at the Electronic Freedom Foundation. There are very high-resolution cameras that can see thousands of feet away and are designed to not be seen by the people on the street. The Rapid Rise of Police Drones Flocks growing push to sell aerial surveillance systems comes just as law enforcement vastly expands the use of whats called drone-as-first-responder (DFR) programs. Today, roughly 2,000 police departments and public safety agencies use this technology, which sends drones out to answer 911 calls and either clear the call (determine no additional police presence is necessary), help scout out the scene before other personnel arrive, or provide real-time insight during emergencies and standoffs. The ease of use of the technology, combined with the larger workforce shortages in policing and an effort to avoid high-speed car chases, have been cited as reasons to invest in these eyes in the sky. Flock has roughly 175 DFR customers across the country, but the growth opportunities are huge. According to retired Chief Charles L. Werner, founder of the Droneresponders industry group, there are about 125 new Federal Aviation Administration approvals for DFR programs every month. The increasing technological capacity for cops to utilize cameras and drones flips the typical police process, says Bryan Cox, head of police accountability at the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office. As he explains, instead of probable cause setting off police oversightyoure free from government oversight absent some extraordinary reasonthe increasing ability of police to surveil first, to collect all the data and figure out what the problem is, raises important constitutional questions about privacy. Flock believes drones are an important tool for law enforcement, says Paris Lewbel, Flock public safety manager. Flock began expanding its drone offerings in 2024 when it acquired Aerodome. The company has also prioritized the production of its new Alpha drone in the U.S., with plans to open a factory in Georgia by 2027. Building domestically allows the company to gain market share after the sale of Chinese drones such as DJI were banned by President Donald Trump in December 2025. Flock is also selling drone security to private companies and even prisons. The firms technologyAlpha drones can travel at an industry-leading 60 mph and go 45 minutes between chargesgives Flock users more expansive abilities to track drivers and suspects, and to incorporate drone footage into its AI-powered analysis tools. Like many other police tech companies, such as Axon, Flock wants to create an ecosystem of technology, becoming the go-to-vendor for law enforcement (and locking them into their proprietary systems, says Lipton). The technology really speaks for itself, Lewbel tells Fast Company. If you speak to law enforcement agencies that have started to deploy drones as a first responder, they’re seeing significant positive impact. A car with a license plate that appears on an ALPR hot list can activate rapid drone deployment. First, an ALPR camera clocks a license plate on a watch list and sends an alert; once the alert is triggered, a police officer needs to press a button to launch a drone, a safeguard designed to keep humans in the loop. Once airborne, the drone can track the vehicle. Proponents point to safeguards that they argue limit the surveillance applications of this tech and focus it on active investigations or incidents. San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins claims the citys fleet of nearly 100 drones gets used responsibly: only in the course of active investigations, and not as a blanket surveillance. Lewbel says Flock drones cant do ALPR scans automatically (though he does concede that an office looking at a drone camera could simply call in the license plate number). But others argue that not only can it do that, but its also trivial fo an office to enter a plate number seen through a drone camera into an ALPR system. San Francisco as a battleground One of the main battlegrounds of public opinion around drones and policing is San Francisco, where the wider push to incorporate an array of high-tech policing tools has become a much bigger political issue, as evidence of improper data sharing with other agencies became public. Drones, including Flock models, in addition to hundreds of stationary license plate cameras, came to the SFPD after the city passed Proposition E in 2024, which allowed the city to use technology and centralized command stations called real-time crime centers. Before, the city was still playing old-school cops and robbers, says Jenkins, the San Francisco DA. Now, she says, these tools have helped dramatically improve response times, are able to chase suspects, and are being used as evidence in courtrooms. The city is in the midst of rewriting its drone policies, with leaders finding themselves fiercely debating the efficacy and impact of this kind of policing. In early September, the San Francisco Police Commission was set to vote on the proposed drone policy, but the meeting was delayed until October 14. Jenkins says a good part of the proposed reforms she supports would deal with reforming the way the system is used to prevent outside agency access, and to function as a deterrent to those who might think of abusing it, and really build trust with the public that it’ll be used the right way. Others find the citys latest drone policy proposal lacking. Detractors argue the proposals broad language would justify increased drone surveillance deployment. Lipton calls it a really atrociously inadequate drone policy. San Francisco law enforcement holds itself up as a case study for the use of technology. Jenkins says drones and other high-tech tools have helped lead to a decrease in crime, though research shows the recent improvement may have more varied and complicated contributors. (There isnt currently an independent, peer-reviewed study on the impact of this tech in San Francisco, though a preliminary study of more than 200 police departments that wasnt peer reviewed suggested the tech does have an impact on crime rates.) According to SFPD stats, from March 2024 to August 4, 2026, DFR responded to 4,000 incidents, and assisted in more than 1,550 cases and more than 655 arrests of suspects, meaning drone footage was utilized during the investigation. So far in 2026, DFR has been used with 40 search warrants and has been involved in 70-plus chases. The use of the technology for policing varied: A drone unit helped track suspect cars, which led to an arrest and conviction for pickpockets operating in Chinatown. Drone footage has already been utilized in a number of court cases and prosecutions in San Francisco, though it can be tricky to fully track its use. In a case still in preliminary hearing, for example, drone evidence that helped track a defendant fleeing a scene did lead to a felony stop and arrest, but wont be used in court, according to the DAs office. Do Drones Challenge the Definition of Privacy? Drone policing raises other significant questions, including legal issues, that opponents say remain unanswered. The recent San Francisco policy proposal would reduce evidence retention from 12 months to 30 days. Flock has set its default policy at retention for seven days. As Jenkins argues, We don’t have the time, the staffing, nor the interest to collect data on law-abiding people. We just don’t, and so every ounce of access to this data is preserved for investigations of criminal activity. Period. But that preservation can be an issue, Cox and others note. Is the analysis drawn from that videowhere cars went, what suspects met with other suspects, where people gatheredstored as data elsewhere, rendering the elimination of video a formality? Flocks Lewbel says after a video is destroyed, theres still flight information, due to the audit log of flights that gets added to online public transparency portals operated by public safety agencies. And these drone videos often get classified as evidence, which agencies upload to their own digital evidence management systems, which get retained for much longer periods of time. Others raise the issue of warrantless surveillance. Police departments often utilize the argument that drone surveillance happens in public, where a cop could be observing someones behavior, and theres no expectation of privacy. Tapping a phone, which requires observing what happens in someones home and carries the expectation of privacy, requires a judges discretion and decision. Jenkins makes the same argument in favor of police being able to utilize drones without a judges warrant. You have a constitutional expectation of privacy when you talk on the phone, she says. Therefore, that is the reason that police and law enforcement have to go get a warrant before being allowed to violate that expectation of privacy. When you are in public, you do not. You don’t have the same entitlement, nor should you have the same expectation. The drone can only surveil what’s in public. She also argues you can see and hear the drones, making their presence obvious. But theres no way existing constitutional understanding would permit the constant possibility of video surveillance, Cox argues, both as it pertains to the right to privacy and the freedom of association. Could you ever meet someone without fear, knowing that interaction could be logged and tracked? He considers these issues open questions that need to be decided in a court of law; federal courts have already begun to grapple with the way the technologys retrospective and search features may come in conflict with the Fourth Amendments guarantees around unlawful search and seizure. Jenkins argues that the introduction of drones for policing has been a new positive for the city, and has lived up to what the voters expected when they passed Proposition E. Technology, she says, has helped the department succeed, and taking it away or restricting it would be a mistake. We can’t go back to that place out of fear, she says. You do what it takes to put guardrails in. You don’t throw out the baby with the bathwater because it’s dirty, right? Thats not how it works, and that’s not in the best interests of our communities. Detractors argue it just entrenches more tech that will always be ripe for potential abuses. This is the exact sort of mission creep that I think we kind of anticipated was going to happen, says Lipton.
Category:
E-Commerce
When strolling the hallways of his first internship in investment banking, Alex R. kept noticing small trinkets crowding the desks of executives and junior analysts alike, as if each workstation grew its own skyline made up of knickknacks. Some were simple: glass prisms the size of a coffee mug with a companys name and the banks logo etched on the surface. But others were much flashier. Some were adorned with 3D-printed elements, floating features, and specialized lighting. The awards silhouettes sometimes took the form of the Bitcoin logo, a game console, or even a Japanese temple. [Photo: Courtesy HV Recognition] Alex, who is now a full-time investment banker in New York City, wondered what these eccentric objects were. He sheepishly broached the topic with an analyst on the team, not wanting to look uninitiated. I asked them, What are these things? he tells Fast Company. (Alexs last name as well as those of other bankers mentioned have been redacted due to fear of professional repercussions.) For an industry whose public image is one of intensity (see the ego-driven, viciously competitive characters in Industry or the Wolf of Wall Street), the idea of the grown men behind million-dollar deals swooning over tiny desktop trinkets seems absurd. Especially when flashier perks like steak dinners at Casa Cipriani, bottles of Dom Perignon, and sometimes even the occasional Rolex are considered normal industry rewards. But for many, it is the $100-a-piece deal toy that they covet the most. Taking many shapes and sizes, the figurines serve as a sort of participation trophy for the closure of a transactiona memento for those involved in a deal and the banks clients. To anyone outside the finance universe, the concept of deal toys is foreign, but within the industry the toys often become one of the highest signifiers of success for young analysts. So much so, when two investment bankers in their mid-twenties overheard a conversation about deal toys, they lit up with joymixed with confusion over why normies knew, or cared about, their tradition at all. How did you hear about this in the first place? one asked. The other chimed in, I forget people dont know these exist. [Photo: Courtesy HV Recognition] The art of the deal toy Before deal toys existed, bankers had newspaper clippings to commemorate their work. The deals appeared in the form of newspaper tombstone ads to adhere to the Securities and Exchange Commission’s requirement to publicly disclose big deals like initial public offerings. The brief ads, which ran in publications like The Wall Street Journal or the Financial Times, were basic in style, listing the underwriters for a deal and brief details on the transaction. Eventually, though no one can say exactly when, the tombstone came off the page and moved to the desk. (The name tombstone has evolved to become a synonym for a deal toy.) At some point in the 1970s, bankers looked for a more permanent recognition outside of a tiny newspaper ad that could get thrown out. They started simply taking a digital print, a card cut out with all the deal information on it, and they would embed it into . . . lucitethat way, it would stay embedded and last forever, and they would gift that to everyone that was involved in the deal, says Erik Steudler, founder and president/CEO of Milestone Awards, a deal toy manufacturer with offices from New York and Nashville to Hong Kong and London. Eventually, a cottage industry of toy manufacturers emerged. Entrepreneurs figured that, regardless of location, financiers want a physical form of recognition. They were right. A handful of companies focusing solely on corporate awardslike deal toysgained momentum, employing dozens of designers and sales people. The current landscape is made up mostly of alumni of those original businesses who have branched out on their own. Over the decades the practice grew into a global tradition, with in-house design teams working alongside financial institutions to develop their own trinkets, which are now made mostly in China. [Photo: Courtesy HV Recognition] There was a brief decline in deal toys after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008, which triggered more stringent regulation on bank spending. The industry has since rebounded with an even larger demand as financial institutions lead more lucrative transactions than ever. As the size of deals goes up, so does the deal toy market. The tech boom and consolidation trend is also helping. Think big name mergers like the Paramount-Warner Brothers deal or forthcoming billion-dollar IPOs from AI companies like OpenAI. Deal toys are now a $60 million industry. Designs have become more ambitious, too, with manufacturers using emerging technologies like 3D printing o create bespoke toys. I find with every year that passes, there’s more and more that becomes feasible and durable, says Gregory Thomas, sales director at HV Recognition, one of the leading firms in the industry with offices in Europe, Asia, and the U.S. If you’d have asked me 10 years ago the stuff that I was doing today, I’d wouldve said you’ve lost your mind. [Photo: Courtesy HV Recognition] Thomas, who has spent decades in the deal toy business, has personal highlights including a basketball enclosed in an acrylic box and a Nike Air Jordan sneaker the size of a loaf of bread, both made using custom molds and printing methods. Thomas launched his former company’s Asia operations, has worked in various markets, and has noticed how design preferences change across markets. While European clients might prefer subdued, minimalist designs, American analysts often opt for a bigger the better approach. Today, the toys take many shapes. When she was a sophomore intern, Kirsten W., a young investment banker in NYC, caught a couple of analysts swinging what looked like a baseball bat. It was actually a deal toy. One of my VPs just got a new one and its a giant wizard on a marble plaque, and Ive also seen a bowling ball, she says. [Photo: Courtesy HV Recognition] Making the deal toys The life of a deal toy begins in the hands of junior analysts, who, upon closing a deal, are tasked with reaching out to manufacturers to develop a concept. While some view the process as just another checklist to complete, many use the opportunity as a creative outlet in an otherwise logistical job. The whole process is pretty exciting the first time you get to do it, says Michael D., another young New York banker. When you finally get it, its fun to see it in person, and people in the office are interested in seeing it as well. Sometimes analysts come in with a clear idea, referencing icons relevant to the deal. A transaction with a Japanese company might incorporate the country’s architecture, while other times a clients special interest makes it onto the designlike the time a figure of Slash, the Guns N’ Roses guitarist, ended up on a deal toy. Some manufacturers will take the initiative and seek out notable deals, as did Thomas, who reached out to industry contacts to propose a design for SpaceX’s $86 billion IPO. Their proposal featured an alien dressed as a cowboy riding a vertical SpaceX rocket with LED lighting throughout; Elon Musk’s face was emblazoned in a crystal panel beside the deals details. The timeline from brainstorming to unboxing the toys may run upwards of two or three months, depending on the complexity of the design. A more affordable toy might borrow from the original deal toys, set as clear prisms or glass cubes with the deals details printed on the object. But some toys can go as wild as physics will allow, with custom molds made for the objects, 3D printed elements, and even magnets used to create a floating illusion. The budget for deal toys varies, with some deals having a budget of thousands of dollars. The budget determines who gets a toy. Larger budgets allow for dozens of team members to get one, sometimes even including the lawyers on the deal, while other times only a handful of analysts might make the cut. [Photo: Courtesy HV Recognition] Bragging rights While it may seem like frivolous spending, the toys have intangible value for both the bank and the bankers. We refer to it as desktop advertisement, says Steudler at Milestone Awards. The clients keep them on their desk . . . and will always remember the job that their investment bank did because their logos are on the deal toy and so they’ll go back to them. For the bankers, the toys are both a rite of passage and a token of appreciation for the hours of work that go into a transaction. [Photo: Courtesy HV Recognition] You put so much time and effort into something and its a nice symbol of your work, Kirsten says. I think for more senior bankers its more of a sign of prestigea who has more contestbut early on in your career I think it just more of a satisfying close, and nice to be recognized for your hard work. But the toys undoubtedly also feed into a caracter trait many associate with the finance industry. “It’s a huge ego thing for bankers, says Thomas at HV Recognition. It’s almost like a portable CV. And while many acknowledge that the toys dont really matter in the grand scope of thingsthey also agree, they kind of do. My personal opinion is that they dont matter, Michael says. But, he adds, when my coworker makes fun of me for my football team losing, I remind him I have more deal toys.
Category:
E-Commerce
He looks like a CoComelon character who grew up and mated with an E. coli microbe. But dont let looks fool you. Under the hood, Metas new Muse agentic AI platform is incredibly powerfuland potentially incredibly risky. Ive been testing Muse since Meta launched him on September 8. Hes a clever little bastard, provided youre willing to tell him basically everything about your life. Late to the party For years, Meta has seemed inexcusably late to the AI party. While flashy startups like OpenAI and Anthropic were winning trillion-dollar valuations, Nvidia was getting fat on its success as a shovel-seller, and Google was slowly replacing its core product with AI, Meta seemed stuck in the past. The company encouraged AI slop on its platforms, only to change its tune. It did legitimate research in open-weight models, but also took some hilariously wrong-headed steps, like releasing AI chatbots that mimic celebrities without their permission. It was tempting to write Meta off as an also-ran. Perhaps Mark Zuckerberg was still gun-shy from the abject failure of the Metaverse, and was going to sit this particular revolution out. Then, Muse landed. Almost overnight, the platform was stealing market share from Metas competitors, and growing shockingly fast. Less than a month post-launch, Muse had wracked up 6.6 million downloads, and an even-more-impressive 1.8 million daily active users. Citi thinks it could generate $27 billion in revenue in fairly short order. Meta, in other words, was late to the partybut now that its arrived, the companys tech is all anyone can talk about. Distressingly fluffy As with many things Mark Zuckerberg creates, Muse is weird. The agentic AI platform is personified by a distressingly fluffy and cute little smiling mascot, who adorns every Muse billboard and types away cheerfully at the top of the Muse app when you chat with it. Experts have long warned against personifying AI. Phooey! said Zuckerberg. Muse is as anthropomorphized as platforms come. Users can customize their Muse avatar to their own preferences and give their specific Muse a name. (Mark Zuckerberg is apparently not allowed.) When the bot chats with users, it does so in a friendly, personal manner. There are lots of first-person pronouns and text-message conventions. Ask Muse a question, and it will thumbs-up your chat while it slowly types out a response, just like your boomer uncle. Chatting with ChatGPT feels a bit like schmoozing with your accountant, or perhaps your proctologist. Where ChatGPT is overly formal and stodgy, Muses language is zippy, confident, and a little cheeky. Behind that fluffy, personable facade, though, is a wholly different kind of AI. Most chatbots today act essentially like glorified search engines. You type in a query, the bot does some research, and you get a response back thats mainly informational. Muse, in contrast, is an agentic AI platform. Rather than just providing information, its designed to take specific actions on behalf of its userswriting emails, booking travel, filling out forms, and signing into websites. Meta pitches Muse as AI that gets it done” and suggests handing it tasks like booking a flight or registering for a 10K race. To work this specific kind of magic, Muse makes use of virtual machines. Every user essentially gets a virtual computer in the cloud, which their Muse can use to carry out its duties. This lets the bot do things that others struggle with, like browsing complex websites on your behalf, signing into your accounts, drafting and sending emails via your internet service provider of choice, and more. Its an approach pioneered by OpenClaw, a techie-friendly agentic AI platform. Using a virtual machine lets Muse do anything a human might do on a computer, without the risk of wrecking your actual computer when things inevitably go wrong. Tell me everything! That combinationa friendly and conversational demeanor, an agentic AI empowered to take specific actions, and a virtual computer that lets Muse actually act on its ideasis a compelling one. If youve ever shouted at ChatGPT, Just do it for me!, when it gives you complex instructions for disputing a parking ticket or making a doctors appointment and then bows out, youll love Muses can-do attitude. I asked what car I should lease, and Muse got me quotes for a Kia. When I asked how I could save money, it scanned through my financial data, determined Hulu was ripping me off, found better plans tailored to my familys actual usage, and offered to switch me to one. Its advice saved me $80 per month. Muses virtual computer also allows it to work when youre not actively chatting with it. Periodically, Ill get a notification from Muse, telling me its prepared a report on how I can decrease my electric bill, or sell my old Tesla for top dollar. All this power, though, comes with a price. Most chatbots are squeamish about asking users for personal data, or access to their most intimate, sensitive accounts. Not Muse. The second you open the app, Muse asks for full access to your Gmail, as well as permission to read your text messages and browse the photos on your phone. The app also wants to know your location at all times (via your phones GPS), and encourages you to share conversations youve had with other competing chatbots so it can get to know you better. Muse also presumably has access to the copious amounts of data Meta has gathered about you through decades of low-key surveillance. I once ran an experiment to see what data Meta was capturing about me. I found that the company was spying on nearly every website I visited, and was even tracking things like when I put a specific smoothie into my Doordash cart, even if I didnt buy it. Now, Muse likely has access to all that data, as well as any live accounts and data I might choose to voluntarily hand it. Again, all that information makes it uniquely clever. But using Muse also means handing complete control of your data to a friendly little dude who happens to be owned by a demonstrably less friendly one. Tread Carefully Is Metas voracious appetite for personal data a reason to avoid Muse? Does the apps friendly little face conceal a monster lurking below? Not necessarily. Agentic AI is powerful, and its here to stay. Muse is the first real attempt to put the technology in the hands of everyday people. But AI agents are already making huge impacts in the business world. And now that Muse has proved the concept, Metas competitors are tripping over themselves to release personal agentic AI platforms of their own. OpenAIs version features a mascot that looks like a mash-up of Clippy and the poop emoji. Eschewing agentic bots like Muse, then, would ultimately be about as effective as ignoring ChatGPT in 2023. The tech is here. And besides, even if you avoid apps like Muse, theyll likely slurp up your personal data via your friends and family members. Still, personal agentic AI is a brand-new, largely untested technology. There are already reports of strangers appearing on users doorsteps, summoned by Muse for Facebook Marketplace transactions that no one authorized. So its reasonable to proceed carefully. Personally, Ive handed Muse select bits of data directly, but I havent allowed it to access my calendar or Gmail. Amid all the furor over agentic AI, its important to remember that you dont need to turn your entire life over to a gigantic tech company, even if a fluffy little bot asks you very nicely.
Category:
E-Commerce
Chief AI officer may be one of the most important executive hires companies make in this decade. It may also be one of the shortest-lived. Just a few years ago, most boards probably wouldve questioned whether they needed a dedicated leader for artificial intelligence. But when ChatGPT started to dominate public consciousness in late 2022 and early 2023, the conversation changed. The rush began to launch AI practices, assemble AI task forces and committees, and of course, appoint chief AI officers. The rationale for hiring a chief AI officer was and remains sound. Without a dedicated person owning AI strategy, initiatives can fragment across teams or lack clear connection to talent, risk, and business opportunity. And given how quickly Ive seen the role gain traction in my work advising companies on technology leadership, Im not surprised that a recent IBM study found more than three-quarters of organizations have a chief AI officer. But as AI becomes an enterprise-wide capability, the logic of a single owner is harder to sustain. If AI is part of every role, workflow, and major decision, why is only one executive in charge? Thats where the paradox lies: The better a chief AI officer does their job today, the less their organization may need the role in the future. Theres precedent for this kind of executive lifecycle. Think about the trajectory of the chief digital officer (CDO), which grew from a niche position at just 6% of companies in 2014 to 21% of companies in 2018; the pace of hiring appeared to peak in 2016. In that era, companies needed a point person to design and implement digital strategy. But as CDOs helped transform their organization, digital transitioned from a specialized capability to something integrated across every domain. And in some cases, CDOs who weren’t integrated with the core business or overlapped with other C-suite roles struggled to maintain relevance. AI adoption will likely mirror that trajectory because it is another operating model change. In theory, AI should fundamentally reshape how work happens, from how finance operates to how HR recruits talent to how CEOs make decisions. The desired endpoint is AI as an underlying infrastructure. This means that if a chief AI officer does their job correctly, theyll eventually make their standalone role unnecessary. Theyll act not only as a technologist but a transformation expert who helps manage change, establish governance, and drive business value. Critically, theyll also build AI fluency across the C-suite until AI becomes everyones responsibility. However, obsolescence doesnt need to be the endpoint for the chief AI officer. Instead, I see potential for these leaders to work themselves out of their role and into a different one through a three-stage evolution. In the first phase, the chief AI officer is an evangelist. Their primary goal is to convince the organization that AI matters, building awareness of the technology and encouraging experimentation to support adoption. In 2026, most organizations have already moved past this phase. The second phase is where most organizations are now: the shift from experimentation to accountability. The chief AI officer evolves into an operator, with the mission of driving value and demonstrating ROI for boards and investors. The third phase is where the chief AI officer lays the groundwork for their next act. Over the next few years, they will become architects, building systems that enable other executives to take ownership of AI within their functions. They help distribute AI accountability, so the CFO owns AI-enabled finance, the CHRO owns AI-enabled talent, the COO owns AI-enabled operations, and so on. In my work, Im already seeing signs of this shift. AI competency is increasingly appearing in job descriptions across all C-suite roles. Executives are expected to be AI enabled themselves, and also enable their teams to use the technology effectively. At the same time, companies are embedding AI champions within each business unit to identify potential uses and govern adoption, rather than relying on a centralized AI command center. A chief AI officer who successfully orchestrates this transition will reduce the need for a separate AI department and, in turn, their role. But theyll also gain a unique understanding of the enterprise, spanning across technology, operations, talent, governance, strategy, and organizational change. That experience positions them to become a broader transformation leader, or even a strategic advisor to the CEO and board. Right now, the vast majority of organizations still need a designated leader to prove where AI creates value and help embed AI as a capability within every executive role. But over the next five years, companies are more likely to eliminate standalone AI teams than create them. Long term, chief AI officers will help their organizations win by embedding AI so thoroughly that it becomes nearly invisible. In doing so, they can prove their readiness for broader enterprise leadership. My bet is that some of the most successful chief AI officers will eventually move into COO, transformation, or even CEO succession pipelines. While the specific role of chief AI officer may eventually disappear, the presence of these leaders doesnt have to. Organizations that are intentional about recognizing and developing their potential can turn a transitional role into a training ground for future enterprise leadership.
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E-Commerce
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