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This Sunday will see the Seattle Seahawks face off against the New England Patriots in Super Bowl LX. The game will also mark the conclusion of the tenth football season featuring Next Gen Stats, the analytics system that delivers detailed data about every game to coaches and broadcasters through a partnership with Amazon Web Services. Next Gen Stats began in 2015, when the National Football League deployed RFID chips in player shoulder pads and even in the football itself, enabling the league to capture location data multiple times per second through sensors installed throughout stadiums. It has since become a mainstay of football broadcasts and training sessions, delivering granular insights to a sport that previously could track only a fraction of the complex movements of 22 players and the ball across the field. Next Gen Stats is part of the vernacular now, says Julie Souza, AWSs global head of sports. Bringing data to the gridiron Behind the scenes, dozens of machine learning modelsthe same kinds of systems AWS offers to process business datatranslate the raw numbers generated by the sensors into understandable stats in real time. With the recent addition of 4K cameras to NFL venues, the system can now capture not just player position on the field but the precise position of shoulders, elbows, knees, and hands, generating 29 data points per player 60 times per second. That data is processed by in-stadium AWS servers in roughly 700 milliseconds, then sent to the cloud to feed machine learning models that run in under 100 milliseconds. The result is analytics delivered to broadcasters within about a second, shorter than the NFLs typical broadcast delay. Announcers are equipped with dashboards that surface key stats, along with AI systems that allow them to ask natural-language questions based on new and historical data, Souza says, such as, When was the last time this particular play happened, or that you know, this metric was achieved? The data is also increasingly used to inform player coaching and off-the-field training, as well as rule changes designed to make the game safer. AWS helped the NFL run thousands of simulated football seasons that informed the Dynamic Kickoff rule, introduced in the 2025 season. The change helped boost returned kickoffs while reducing the plays historically elevated concussion rate. Whats amazing about that is everything that we had modeled for them is what has panned out from the results, Souza says. Analytic dashboards also help teams identify players at risk of injury, allowing coaching and training staffs to intervene before injuries occur. Those changes in play and training led to roughly 700 fewer missed games by players last season, she says. More detailed stats can also help newer fans, including international audiences and younger viewers, understand the game more quickly. Richer player data has enabled new types of broadcasts as well, including animated versions of real games that appeal to families with children, and Amazon Prime Videos Prime Vision with Next Gen Stats stream of Thursday Night Football. Features tested in the Prime Vision stream, such as highlighting players likely to blitz the quarterback, have since made their way into the main broadcast. You can do all of these different versions of broadcast to serve different and specific audiences, but it’s all coming from that same set of data, says Souza. A different kind of bowl game Next Gen Stats data is also used in the NFLs annual Big Data Bowl, an analytics competition that invites contestants to develop new use cases for the leagues vast trove of data, and in some cases leads to jobs with the NFL or individual teams. Souza, who has served as a judge in the competition, says new judging criteria are being added to evaluate how proposed analytics could be conveyed to fans during a broadcast. The shift reflects a broader recognition that even as sports become more driven by data, storytelling remains central. Everything we’re talking about right now is the sciencethe science, and the engineering, and the analytics, and the rigor, and the math, she says. It only matters if the art is there, and the art is the storytelling.
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Hello, and welcome back to Fast Companys Plugged In. Programming, as it turns out, is just typing. Talking at Ciscos AI Summit in San Francisco on February 3, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang made that pithy observation to sum up the phenomenon of people using AI coding tools to simply describe in plain language software they want to exist, with an algorithm doing the heavy lifting. The comment came during a wild, wide-ranging riff on how AI is changing the world, and Huang kept joking that his chatter might have been influenced by several glasses of wine. (Hey, he was the after-dinner speaker.) But even if alcohol-fueled poetic license was involved, the sentiment captured the present moment. The earliest evidence that AI could transform how people program computers came even before ChatGPTs arrival, dating to when GitHub released the first version of its Copilot in 2021. At that point, AI was autocompleting snippets of code for humans rather than generating software from scratch. The progress has been radical since then, reflected in the boom for coding agents such as Cursor, Windsurf, Replit, and the industrys current darling, Anthropics Claude Code. Along the way, the act of willing software into reality through AI got a name: vibe coding. At the Cisco event, Huang, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, Andreessen Horowitz cofounder Marc Andreessen, and other Silicon Valley luminaries talked about the whole industry having arrived at a crucial juncture in the pivot to AI software generation. Anthropics chief product officer, Mike Krieger, whose boss, Dario Amodei, predicted last March that AI would be writing essentially all of the code within a year, suggested thats in the neighborhood of coming trueat least at Anthropic: Right now, for most products . . . it’s effectively 100%. Along with potentially upending the entire tech industry, AIs ability to write programs could have a powerful democratizing effect on how the world uses technology. For the past few decades, most people who use computers have been wholly dependent on software written by trained professionals. What happens when that trained professional might be an algorithm, available to the masses to create whatever pops into their minds? Ive been exploring that question since last March, when I used Replit to bring my dream note-taking app to life. The experience was amazing enough that I put up with Replits many rough edges, including its iffy debugging skills, repeated introduction of security flaws, and sycophantic tendency to tell me my ideas were pure genius. Since then, I have had better luck with new and improved versions of the service. Ive also dabbled with several other coding platforms with increasingly impressive results. But Claude Code, which Ive been using recently to reimagine a game I wrote back in high school, is the most uncanny of them all. As a lark, I fed it my 1980s BASIC code, expecting it would have no clue what to do with something written in such an obsolete language. Instead, it roughed out a modern, web-native version in minutes. Since then, weClaude Code and Ihave been collaborating to improve the game and dress up its graphics. I say we because it truly feels like were working as a team. Claude builds out my ideas without me having to spell them out in excruciating detail, and sometimes comes up with ones of its own. Its ability to understand what I want the game to do, and why, can feel like it borders on the clairvoyant. When Ive finished fooling around with the new versionsoonIll share it here so you can judge the results for yourself. (Full disclosure: I had one bizarre issue with Claude Code. For a few days, it labored under the mistaken understanding that some of my requests were examples of prompt injectiona nefarious third party issuing commands meant to interfere with the projectand kept assuring me that it was ignoring them. Despite that, it continued to code up a storm. I asked Anthropic what was going on, but the company hasnt yet provided an explanation.) Quirks and all, Im thoroughly enjoying making AI-generated software. But I do confess that its brought out my inner Edsger Dijkstra. A celebrated computer scientist and A.M. Turing Award winner, Dijkstra bristled at the notion that anyone should be able to create software. He maintained that proper programming required an especially deep understanding of mathematics. Mere mortals shouldnt even try. In a 1975 essay, Dijkstra ripped into BASIC, the language I used to write the original version of my game. Created at Dartmouth in 1964 and initially intended for non-techie liberal arts majors, BASIC emphasized approachability over elegance. Instead of demanding too much from these neophytes, it was simple to learn and tolerated sloppy code. He hated it. As someone who once programmed a fair amount but allowed my skills to atrophy, I am nagged by the fear that vibe coding is a form of cheating. It feels too easy. Im also bothered by the fact that I dont fully understand the code Claude wrote, and in fact have barely glanced at it. In short, I havent been entirely comfortable with the prospect of software becoming something that anyone can make. Dijkstra, who died in 2002, isnt around to chime in on Claude Code or other forms of vibe coding. I cant imagine hed be thrilled with them, though. In many cases, their algorithms seem to settle for the most expedient approach to a job, resulting in software that may be less than optimal even if it gets the job done. I cheerfully admit to being unqualified to judge Claudes coding proficiency, but my high school programming buddy Charles, who went on to become a professional developer, took a peek and deemed some of its techniques cringe-worthy. Legitimate reasons exist to be skittish about the quality of vibe-coded software, particularly on the security front. Last week, an app called Moltbooka social network for AI agents< .="" href="https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2026/01/ai-agents-now-have-their-own-reddit-style-social-network-and-its-getting-weird-fast/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">made quite a splash. According to security firm Wiz, it also left its database of user information vulnerable to leaks, due to a misconfigured server. Vibe coding may have been to blame. My reluctance to be responsible for assuring other peoples privacy is the biggest reason why I havent shared any of the productivity apps Ive vibe coded for myself. Presumably, software companies with human engineers in the loopsuch as Nvidia and Anthropichave charged them with vetting the robustness of AIs handiwork. Its tough to imagine the day coming when that isnt essential. Still, I am slowly getting around to the belief that vibe coding is not an alternative to coding, but a legitimate form of it. Even the most gifted programmer typically needs help translating their work into something a computer can understand. Most of them rely on high-level programming languages that break tasks into the reduced set of low-level instructions a processor performs natively. Until now, those high-level languages have had names such as Python, JavaScript, Swift, and C++. Thanks to remarkable tools such as Claude Code, they can now have names like English. Im looking forward to seeing what happens once the floodgates break wide open. 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. More top tech stories from Fast Company The real reasons Elon Musk merged xAI and SpaceXIt’s all about this sci-fi fantasy. Read More Anthropic takes aim at chatbot adswith its own Super Bowl adThe company’s tongue-in-cheek spots highlight concerns about advertising inside AI assistants and provoke a sharp response from OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. Read More How the Epstein files reignited the rich and powerfuls oldest grudgesFrom Elon Musk and Reid Hoffman to Ben Shapiro and Steve Bannon, the latest Epstein disclosures are giving powerful rivals fresh material to settle old scores. Read More Celebrating Cultures That Power InnovationBest Workplaces for Innovators celebrates cultures that empower employees to improve, build, and invent. Apply today to be recognized where ideas thrive and innovation drives impact. Apply Today TikTok is fueling a SoulCycle comebackThe boutique spin giant is riding a wave of 2016 nostalgia back into the spotlight, and Gen Zers are on board. Read More This super simple tripod is designed for the modern ageManfrotto worked with Layer to design an easy-to-use tripod built for the new era of content creation. Read More AI is about to invade the real world2026 is the year the technology gets physical. Read More
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Organizational leaders are witnessing a steep and unprecedented rise in employee healthcare costs that is eroding bottom-line profitability. According to data from the Business Group on Health, these costs are projected to rise by 9% this year, representing a 62% increase since 2017. To put it in perspective, this represents an incremental hit of nearly $1 million to the bottom line for a midsize organization of 500 people. What CFOs are now confronting is a tipping point where the average total cost to insure an employee is nearing $20,000 annually. Notably, it is specifically mental health claims that are driving the spike. PwCs 2026 Medical Trend report shows that inpatient mental health claims have jumped a staggering 80% in the last 24 months. For years, the corporate world has treated employee mental health as an imported problempersonal struggles that people bring with them into the workplace. But the evidence is now irrefutable that how employers manage their employees is having the greater impact and is often the leading driver of the strain. To be very clear, the way we work today has become a primary manufacturer of incremental stress, burnout, and mental health decline. The Smoking Gun: Work is the Cause Until now, the standard corporate response to employee mental health challenges has been to treat the symptoms rather than address the root causes. This means theyve offered workers resilience training, yoga and exercise classes, and sleep and meditation appsall band-aids on a structural wound. The evidence shows that mental health strain is no longer an outlier and is the predictable outcome of employee expectations that exceed the human ability to recover and sustain high levels of productivity. According to the Mental Health America (MHA) data, 84% of workers identified at least one workplace factornot a personal onethat was actively harming their mental health. This suggests that for the vast majority of people, the mental health crisis isnt bred at home; its being created at their desk. Here are three workplace leadership factors causing the most damage: A Deliberate Lack Of Boundaries:With technology allowing people the ability to remain connected to work at all hours, the clear line between when employees workdays start and end has been entirely erased. Not wanting to forfeit productivity, organizations have so far resisted giving people this clarityand workplace managers too often exploit this by texting and e-mailing employees at odd hours and on weekends. Always being on and expected to respond prevents the human nervous system from ever truly recovering. People never get off the treadmill. The Erosion of Human Connection: A focus on efficiencyand doing more with lessincreasingly means workplace leaders are stretched too thin to hold weekly check-in meetings with their teams. Companies are systematically replacing human-to-human coaching with AI systems, providing performance feedback via online dashboards and algorithmic scores. This is a biological disaster; it deprives the human nervous system of the context and connection required to feel safe. It also greatly undermines feelings of belonging, which is known to be the cornerstone of human well-being. The Micromanagement Surge: The rise of digital oversight is slowly creating a pervasive surveillance culture in our workplaces. In the 2024 American Psychological Associations, Work in America survey, 43% of employees reported feeling “monitored” at work in some way, and those who felt monitored were significantly more likely to report poor mental health. The lack of trust makes people feel incapable of doing the job they were hired to do and whittles away at their self-esteem. Furthermore, this lack of agency strips away their sense of control, which is another primary driver of human well-being. The Managerial Squeeze The primary source of employee stress isnt just their draining workloads, it is the person assigning them. The MHA report found that nearly 40% of employees explicitly name their manager as the top cause of their mental health issues. This is further validated by Gallups 2025 State of the Global Workplace Report, which found that managers report higher levels of daily stress and burnout than the people they leada stress contagion that inevitably flows downward to their teams. Its clear that when managers are run thin by layoffs and executive pressure, they often default to transactional and impersonal styles that make people feel devalued and tipped into survival mode. And, whenever human beings feel unsafethat their job is constantly on the linetheyre naturally more likely to break. In the big picture, research shows many workers feel that their bosses are simply not there for them; they dont feel known and respected for who they are outside of work or valued for all they contribute. All of this means that workplace leaders have become stressors rather than stress relievers. The Remedies: A Redirection Of Time And Intention Facing both a financial and moral imperative to neutralize these stressors, organizations must now find the courage to sustainably pivotmoving away from whats effectively been wellness theater and toward structural changes explicitly known to elevate employee well-beingand help restore mental health: Re-establish The On/Off Switch Even if companies choose against establishing a one-size-fits-all remedy, workplace leaders should set explicit dark hours (e.g., 7 p.m. to 7 a.m.) for their own teams so people can rejuvenate. This will demand that leaders model and respect those boundaries and remove any stigma currently attached to not responding to messages after work. Nothing says people cant work beyond normal hours if they choose to. Its the expectation of always needing to be on that is the real pain point. Foster Radical Belonging Human beings aren’t built to handle pressure alone, and feeling connected to ones team is what supports resilience and personal thriving. Intentionally creating opportunities for employees to connect socially has become essential today. Leaders must also restore weekly check-ins (and coaching) with all direct reports and allow sufficient time to discuss each persons well-being before focusing on work goals and performance. Look Out For People What people need to flourish are feelings of psychological and emotional safety. So, leaders should ask themselves, Do my employees have work demnds they can reasonably meet? Am I available enough to them as a resource and sounding board? Do my actions demonstrate that I care about each person on and support them individually? Do people feel they have a voice in how their work gets done and in many of the decisions I make? The Heart of the Matter If were learning anything today, its that organizations cannot successfully scale productivity by subtracting humanity. The dramatic rise in healthcare costs and mental health claims reveals the illusion of this, and companies themselves are paying just as great a price as workers. In the end, the most effective mental health support a company can offer is a manager who treats their people humanely.
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