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Three years of progress, as shown by marine animals Excerpt : "Two years ago, I was on a plane with my teenage daughter, messing around with a new AI image generator while the wifi refused to work. Otters were her favorite animal, so naturally I typed: “otter on a plane using wifi” just as the connection was restored. The resulting thread went viral and “otter on a plane using wifi” has since become one of my go-to tests of progress AI image generation. What started as a silly prompt has become my accidental benchmark for AI progress. And tracking these otters over the years reveals three major shifts in AI over the past few years: the growth of multiple types of AI tools, rapid improvement, and the status of local and open models."

The advantages of facilitating free-ranging periods during childhood Audio/podcast description: I"f you’re a parent or a teacher, you’ve probably wondered how to balance play and safety for the kids in your care. You don’t want to put children in danger, but you also don’t want to rob them of the joy of exploration. This week, we talk with psychologist  Peter Gray  about how this balance has changed — for parents and children alike — and what we can do about it."

Rather, just a Mother that sings to them Excerpt: " Clearly, it pays to be skeptical about get-smart-quick schemes. But what if music does have a salutary effect on infants, one that is more about happiness than smarts? Every parent wants a baby who cries less and is easy to soothe. Now a new study shows that music can help—as long as it’s created with your own vocal cords.The study, led by Eun Cho and Lidya Yurdum of the Yale Child Studies Center, looked at how often parents normally sing to their baby and whether that frequency could be juiced by a little music education and some electronic nudges. The researchers randomly divided 110 parents of 3-6 month old infants into two groups. Those in the experimental group were taught some simple folk songs using karaoke style sing-alongs, and were given a book of folk songs for children with lively illustrations, lyrics and pressable buttons. They also received weekly newsletters about music for 6 weeks. Parents in both groups were prompted at random times to fill out surveys about what their babies were doing. Those in the music enrichment group reported that they had recently sung to their babies 89% of the time, compared to 65% for those in the control group. Clearly, when parents are given resources and encouragement, they are more likely to incorporate singing into their infants’ daily lives."

Perhaps companies should too Excerpt: " In 2022, I signed on as lead researcher at 4DWG, an international NGO that aims to make a four-day workweek the new standard. Since then, we have studied 245 businesses and nonprofits as they adopted four-day-week pilot programs for more than 8,700 workers, in countries including the U.S., U.K., Brazil, Portugal, Germany and South Africa. For those employees, the results of working one day less every week, with no reduction in pay, have been outstanding: 69% experience reduced burnout, 42% have better mental health, and 37% see improvements in physical health. Thirteen percent of participants say they wouldn’t go back to a five-day schedule for any amount of money. These findings may not sound surprising. Who wouldn’t prefer to work less? What may be unexpected is how much success organizations are seeing with this model. We ask them to rate the success of the trials, and they give consistently high scores—an average of 8.2 out of 10. After a year, only 20 companies, less than 10% of the total, decided to discontinue their four-day week. We also saw excellent results in performance metrics such as revenue, absenteeism and resignations. The bottom line is that the four-day week has been a huge win for the companies. The philosophy of the four-day-week trials is that companies can maintain 100% of their performance despite 20% less time at the workplace. With a little help, most of the companies figure out productivity hacks. The most common is to cut down on meetings."

Why boys crack up at rape jokes, think having a girlfriend is “gay,” and still can’t cry—and why we need to give them new and better models of masculinity Related article Excerpt: " I’ve spent two years talking with boys across America—more than 100 of them between the ages of 16 and 21—about masculinity, sex, and love: about the forces, seen and unseen, that shape them as men. Though I spoke with boys of all races and ethnicities, I stuck to those who were in college or college-bound, because like it or not, they’re the ones most likely to set cultural norms. Nearly every guy I interviewed held relatively egalitarian views about girls, at least their role in the public sphere. They considered their female classmates to be smart and competent, entitled to their place on the athletic field and in school leadership, deserving of their admission to college and of professional opportunities. They all had female friends; most had gay male friends as well. That was a huge shift from what you might have seen 50, 40, maybe even 20 years ago. They could also easily reel off the excesses of masculinity. They’d seen the headlines about mass shootings, domestic violence, sexual harassment, campus rape, presidential Twitter tantrums, and Supreme Court confirmation hearings. A Big Ten football player I interviewed bandied about the term toxic masculinity. “Everyone knows what that is,” he said, when I seemed surprised. Yet when asked to describe the attributes of “the ideal guy,” those same boys appeared to be harking back to 1955. Dominance. Aggression. Rugged good looks (with an emphasis on height). Sexual prowess. Stoicism. Athleticism. Wealth (at least some day). It’s not that all of these qualities, properly channeled, are bad. But while a 2018 national survey of more than 1,000 10-to-19-year-olds commissioned by Plan International USA and conducted by the polling firm PerryUndem found that young women believed there were many ways to be a girl—they could shine in math, sports, music, leadership (the big caveat being that they still felt valued primarily for their appearance)—young men described just one narrow route to successful masculinity. * One-third said they felt compelled to suppress their feelings, to “suck it up” or “be a man” when they were sad or scared, and more than 40 percent said that when they were angry, society expected them to be combative. In another survey, which compared young men from the U.S., the U.K., and Mexico, Americans reported more social pressure to be ever-ready for sex and to get with as many women as possible; they also acknowledged more stigma against homosexuality, and they received more messages that they should control their female partners, as in: Men “deserve to know” the whereabouts of their girlfriends or wives at all times."

We're all just riding in it Excerpt: Unless you live in one of the few cities where you can hail a ride from Waymo, which is owned by Google’s parent company, Alphabet GOOGL -0.07%decrease; red down pointing triangle , it’s almost impossible to appreciate just how quickly their streets have been invaded by autonomous vehicles.  Waymo was doing 10,000 paid rides a week in August 2023. By May 2024, that number of trips in cars without a driver was up to 50,000. In August, it hit 100,000. Now it’s already more than 250,000.  After pulling ahead in the race for robotaxi supremacy, Waymo has started pulling away.

The model is not the product Excerpt: "Today, the race to build the smartest AI model is still on—but it’s becoming increasingly clear that this won’t be the exclusive domain of a few wealthy tech giants. DeepSeek has already demonstrated what’s possible with its somewhat-open models. The real value, though, lies in what happens around the model. For example, LLMs became significantly more useful when they gained the ability to fact-check themselves using real-time web data—and cite their sources. Now, models are beginning to operate systems beyond themselves. Both Anthropic and OpenAI, for instance, have models that can control aspects of a personal computer." Related article

An optimal social topography of work entails design mastery and stewardship of relationships Excerpt: " Most managers measure success in outputs: bottom lines, quarterly gains, performance metrics, and incentives. But the forces that shape those outcomes are often invisible — rooted in relationships, communication, and how people support one another. Many management models overlook these dynamics, treating them as background noise rather than essential systems.  Kevin Rockmann , professor of management at George Mason University and CGI corporate partner faculty fellow, argues that managers often lack a nuanced understanding of how employees actually work with and through one another, not just one-on-one with their supervisors.  “We're really trying to get both researchers and practitioners to think about relationships in a different way,” Rockmann says. . “And really, the movement we're working on here is to think more broadly about what relationships do in organizations.’’'  Related thoughts

The discussion gets messy, fast Description from WSJ: Last year, we conducted a social experiment by recruiting people from radically different backgrounds to chat about the economy. That first one was a heartwarming tale. When we brought them back for a second round, things took an unexpected turn.

Publish it anyway Description of the video (transcript and time stamps included) " Are we protecting the vulnerable, or suppressing dissent? In an era marked by cancel culture, outrage cycles, and the censorship of opposing views, philosopher Peter Singer makes a powerful case for freedom of thought and expression. He argues that silencing uncomfortable ideas doesn’t make us safer, it makes us less capable of growing, reasoning, and addressing the pressing challenges of our time."

Bob McDonald, a leader with unique experience as both a Fortune 25 CEO and a cabinet secretary, reflects on the elements of leadership, team health, and building a strong culture. Excerpts: "Leadership is the scarcest resource in the world. It’s not about brands, buildings, money, or hospitals—it’s about leadership. It’s the highest leverage activity in the world. If I were president, I would run leadership training for all my top-level people to give them a rudimentary baseline of experience. The assumption that leaders inherently know how to lead is a fallacy." "...As a former cabinet secretary of the US Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) and CEO of Procter & Gamble, Bob McDonald is one of a handful of leaders who has excelled in both the public and private sectors. Under his leadership at VA, he delivered a significant uplift in service to veterans and organizational culture, and as CEO of Procter & Gamble, he led global expansion, sustained innovation, and profitable growth. As part of our Leadership Excellence series, he sat with Roland Dillon and Scott Blackburn to reflect on his approach to leadership, teamwork, and culture. An edited transcript of the discussion follows. McKinsey: Bob, you’re a rare leader who has worked at the top of both the public and private sectors. What experiences shaped you the most into the leader you are today? Bob McDonald: I would go back to my time at West Point, the United States Military Academy. Attending West Point, the preeminent leadership institution in the world, is a life-changing experience. It focuses you on the profession of leadership, and it made me an intentional and deliberate leader. As a freshman in college, when you have relied on serendipitous leadership in high school, leadership becomes a skill that you have to work hard at to hone over the years. While many leadership books talk about different behaviors in leadership, I think culture is the one aspect that is undervalued. McKinsey: As VA secretary, you had an incredibly important mandate. What were the hardest tests for you as a leader? Bob McDonald: When I took over VA, veteran trust in the organization was 47 percent. Organizations are perfectly designed to achieve the results they get, so if veterans are having adverse medical conditions in Phoenix, for example, that is for a reason. While many books talk about different behaviors in leadership, I think culture is the one aspect that is undervalued. I learned about culture in the US Army—when you’re tucking soldiers into bed at night and you’re waking them up in the morning, whether it’s in the Arctic or the jungles of Panama, you learn a lot about them. What I found at VA was a culture of learned helplessness and a very hierarchical military culture. Everybody called each other by their last name, not their first, and generally by a title. Good news traveled up to leaders very quickly, but bad news didn’t. One of the first things I did was to start a campaign, “Call Me Bob”—rather than call me “Secretary.” That was something I learned at Procter & Gamble. On my first day, I called everyone “Sir “or “Ma’am” since I came from the army, but colleagues said that they refer to each other by their first names, because first names lead to a relationship. That leads to intimacy, intimacy leads to trust, and trust is what makes the company very, very efficient."