After Domino’s Pizza’s first-quarter sales fell far below projections, the world’s largest pizza chain named a new CEO in hopes of turning things around.

BP, 7-Eleven, and Walmart are among a slew of gas stations, convenience stores, and big-box retailers that got sued this week for allegedly using artificial intelligence to spike gas prices in California.

We haven’t seen the last of Bed Bath & Beyond just yet.

Despite filing for bankruptcy in 2023, the home goods retailer is planning a brick-and-mortar comeback alongside The Container Store. Announced on June 18, the companies are introducing 22 co-branded store locations nationwide, bringing together everyday home essentials and custom storage solutions under one roof.

Just two months after Meta announced plans to track employee keystrokes and mouse movements to train its AI models, the company said it would pause the program after an alleged internal leak.

Data is increasingly available on almost every aspect of business: market research, sales, social media, financial metrics. But just because it’s available, should it be used for all decision-making? We asked our Fast Company Impact Council how they balance data-driven decision-making with their gut instinct. The answers may surprise you.

As AI continues to make its way into all avenues of life, more brands are taking a stance about whether they are for or against the technology—and Polaroid just revealed where it stands.

The oldest bridge in Paris has a new look.

Spinoza, never one for flattery, defined ambition as the immoderate desire to make others approve of what we love and hate—in essence, an insatiable craving for other people’s validation. Today, that sounds like a brutal takedown of one of our most celebrated virtues. Ambition has become a word we wear proudly, the engine of LinkedIn bios and graduation speeches, the quality every hiring manager claims to want and every self-help book promises to unlock. And yet Spinoza, writing in the 17th century, was onto something that modern psychology has spent considerable effort confirming: Ambition, at its root, may be less about drive than about anxiety. Less about what we want to achieve, and more about what we fear people will think of us if we don’t.

Oracle is spending big on artificial intelligence—to the tune of $70 billion this year alone—in order to build data centers and AI-capable servers. But that AI expansion hasn’t come without a human cost.

The archives of one of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s most masterful architecture graduates, I.M. Pei, are heading back to the university.

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres on Tuesday called on AI companies to release information about the carbon pollution they create, along with the water and land used to power their operations.

In an address at London Climate Action Week, Guterres proposed the AI Environmental Transparency Initiative, arguing artificial intelligence companies should measure and disclose the impact of their technology—impact that opponents cite as a reason to curb the rapid growth of data centers. Both national governments and local authorities in areas with data centers that support AI are exerting pressure on these companies for more transparency and more standardized reporting across the industry.

Guterres said AI companies should also commit to powering their facilities with electricity produced with renewable technologies, such as wind and solar, by 2030.

“No more hidden costs,” Guterres said at Europe’s largest independent climate conference. “No more shifting the burden onto those least able to bear it. It is time to come clean.”

Across Europe, a record-breaking heat wave has led to “red weather warnings,” thousands of school closures, and multiple deaths. 

Marie Lansley recently started a new job in a new city while searching for a new partner. In her dating pursuits, the freshly minted San Franciscan said she’s been “trying everything”—including some help from artificial intelligence.

AI chatbots have become—for her and many others—de facto dating coaches and relationship experts.

Lansley, 36, consults AI chatbots for help in starting conversations, something she said she finds difficult on dating apps despite being comfortable doing so in person. Although she’s optimistic about the possibilities, she acknowledges the incongruency between the art of romance and the precision of technology.

“I am open to AI finding me the love of my life, but I’m also not fully convinced that it can,” Lansley said. “AI is great at making dating more efficient. But the chemistry—that’s always going to be analog.”

AI adopters have been using the tech in varied ways to find romance. Some patronize AI matchmaking services. Others use AI tools to help build their dating profiles. But the most common way is enlisting chatbots to draft messages to potential matches and interpret messages they receive.

Lansley goes back and forth between OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude. Others turn to xAI’s Grok, Google’s Gemini and other chatbots. Dating apps and AI companies are leaning into it. ChatGPT and Gemini have posted content on TikTok showcasing their chatbots’ customized, personality-laden relationship advice.

“Claude is the new Cyrano,” said Carey Gaynes, a dating coach, referencing the 19th-century French play Cyrano de Bergerac, in which the titular character is the brains behind another man’s romantic words. “You’re using a voice that isn’t yours.”

Gaynes said she has heard of daters of all ages turning to the technology, both from her client base and her following on her YouTube channel, Coffee with Carey. She sees how it could be useful in dating, but like many others, she worries about overreliance.

When it comes to people’s feelings about AI’s role in romance, it’s complicated. There’s a range of excitement, resistance and skepticism.

Tech stocks continued their slide Tuesday, stoking concerns that the long-feared collapse of the AI and chip rally could be near. But some traders on Wall Street say this is only a bump in the road.

An important job in the two or so years leading up to retirement—right up there with figuring out your healthcare coverage and winding down your work activities—is building up a cash cushion. In addition to being there as a source of funding when you eventually retire, cash has the salutary effect of providing a buffer if you retire earlier than you expected due to unforeseen circumstances.

As you build out your bucket portfolio, here’s some guidance on the amount, source, and location of those liquid reserves.

Vegetarians typically don’t have to specify “no meat or plastic” when buying food, but a MorningStar Farms recall begs to differ. 

Meta is now a fashion brand. Today, the tech company launched a new collection of smart glasses designed for the first time in-house and manufactured by its longtime partner EssilorLuxottica.

“This is the first step of Meta taking a really hard pass at becoming relevant in the fashion glasses world,” Peter Bristol, the VP of Industrial Design at Meta, said during a press briefing yesterday. “I hope to earn that right with the products that we ship.”

The silhouettes are archetypal—a squarish rectangle (the Meta Adventurer), a chunkier squarish rectangle (the Meta Fury), and a slim oval (the Meta Starfire Kylie Edition, a collaboration with Kylie Jenner). Each is designed to flatter a wide range of faces.

Shares of Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (Nasdaq: SPCX), better known as SpaceX, are having a bad week so far.