AI is helping students with disabilities. Schools worry about the risks

For Makenzie Gilkison, spelling is such a struggle that a word like rhinoceros might come out as “rineanswsaurs” or sarcastic as “srkastik.”

The 14-year-old from suburban Indianapolis can sound out words, but her dyslexia makes the process so draining that she often struggles with comprehension. “I just assumed I was stupid,” she recalled of her early grade school years.

But assistive technology powered by artificial intelligence has he

Cyberattack hits Japan Airlines, delaying flights for holiday travelers

Japan Airlines said it was hit by a cyberattack Thursday, causing delays to more than 20 domestic flights but the carrier said it was able to stop the onslaught and restore its systems hours later. There was no impact on flight safety, it said.

JAL said the problem started Thursday morning when the company’s network connecting internal and external systems b

An ex-OpenAI exec and futurist talks about AI in 2025 and beyond

Welcome to AI DecodedFast Company’s weekly newsletter that breaks down the most important news in the world of AI. You can sign up to receive this newsletter every week here.

This week, I’m dedicating the newsletter to a conversation I had recently with the futurist

Why social media influencers are going to have a very big 2025

As 2024 rolls into 2025, big changes are potentially afoot in the world of social media. TikTok is potentially weeks away from closure in the United States. X (the app formerly known as Twitter) continues to deviate from the mainstream under its ownership by Elon Musk. And in its place,

YouTube has a new plan to combat clickbait

Thumbnails play the YouTube equivalent of a movie poster, aiming to draw your attention to click and watch when you have hundreds of videos clogging your recommended content. Most of us have been baited to click on a video thanks to a flashy title and enticing thumbnail, only to be disappointed when the actual content has nothing to do with what the headline promised. 

Using attention-grabbing (often misleading) thumbnails and titles has become a standard practice on YouTube. Howev

AI use cases are going to get even bigger in 2025

Over the past two years, generative AI has dominated tech conversations and media headlines. Tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, Midjourney, and Sora captured imaginations with their ability to create text, images, and videos, sparking both excitement and ethical debates.

However, artificial intelligence goes far beyond generative AI—which is just a subset of AI—and its associated models. AI’s real promise lies in its ability to address complex challenges across diverse industries, from mi

YouTube TV price hike got you down? 5 free alternatives

Was YouTube TV’s recent price increase the straw that broke the camel’s back for you? When does the cost of streaming TV stop going up? When?!!

The answer is: Never.

These streaming services are going to keep creeping upward in cost until we’re all shelling out $300 a month.

Enough is enough. Time to take a break. That’s the beauty of streaming services: Y

TikTok is full of bogus, potentially dangerous medical advice

TikTok is the new doctor’s office, quickly becoming a go-to platform for medical advice. Unfortunately, much of that advice is pretty sketchy.

A new report by the healthcare software firm Tebra found 45% of medical advice on TikTok to be false or misleading. Some categories were worse offenders than others, with TikTok videos about alternative medicine having the most inacc

45 years ago, the Walkman changed how we listen to music

Back in 1979, Sony cofounder Masaru Ibuka was looking for a way to listen to classical music on long-haul flights. In response, his company’s engineers dreamed up the Walkman, ordering 30,000 units for an initial production run. Forty-five years later, Sony has sold over 400 million Walkmans and incited a revolution in music technology. 

While there are still Walkmans for sale, most use iPhones and Androids to tune in nowadays. Sony Walkman sound engineer Sato Hiroaki, who joined t

The greatest keyboard never sold

Even as the latest phones and wearables tout speech recognition with unprecedented accuracy and spatial computing products flirt with replacing tablets and laptops, physical keyboards remain beloved for their efficiency. Earlier this year, for example, sci-fi novelist Robert J. Sawyer created a comprehensive archive of files that enables modern PCs to run WordStar 7, the DOS program’s final version. He favors the once-dominant word processo


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