Fast Company Technology

This session celebrates a new Fast Company recognition program: Fast Company Pacesetters. These are executives who are innovating at the intersection of AI, technology, and the customer experience. How can companies use AI to remove friction without sacrificing trust? What does it mean to design experiences that are not only smarter, but truly natural? If you have customers, you won’t want to miss the insights these leaders will deliver. Pacesetters is presented by TCS.

AI may be the future—but the data centers powering it are already putting unprecedented pressure on the present. They require enormous amounts of electricity and water and can place a disproportionate burden on the communities where they’re built. The question is no longer whether we’ll build the infrastructure for an AI-powered world. It’s whether we can build it as cleaner, smarter, and more equitable. From renewable energy and grid resilience to next-generation cooling and water conservation, this panel explores a defining question for the AI era: Can we power the future without burning through the resources and communities we need to sustain it?

President Donald Trump on Tuesday said that he and a large group of leaders of artificial intelligence companies had signed a voluntary accord that will include internal and external reviews during a meeting at the White House aimed at addressing Americans’ fears about the technology.

“I think I’m seeing tremendous self-policing. And they understand that they have to self-police,” Trump told reporters during an impromptu press conference outside the West Wing.

Trump and House Speaker Mike Johnson met with leading executives from top tech firms that are spending hundreds of billions of dollars to build out AI infrastructure, including data centers in communities across the country, which have sparked grassroots, bipartisan opposition.

The accord was signed by Trump, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, Google CEO Sundar Pichai, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, OpenAI President Greg Brockman, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, and Elon Musk, founder of xAI, which is now part of SpaceX.

The accord, which Trump posted on his social media site, Truth Social, late Tuesday, opened the door to future regulation but focused on four voluntary steps for the companies to take.

The accord said the companies would implement “robust internal controls,” partner with an “independent external auditor” to assess whether the controls were working, and establish a committee within each company’s board of directors to evaluate reports from internal and external auditors.

“Over time, it may make sense to codify these steps into laws and regulations,” the accord said.

Trump repeatedly praised the business executives for developing a technology that he said would produce “unbelievable growth.” Investment in data centers and the accompanying computer equipment has accelerated the economy and boosted the stock market, which has swelled investment accounts for higher-income Americans and lifted their spending.

Yet there were some notes of caution Tuesday. Amodei, who has been one of the most outspoken voicescalling for a slowdown in AI development, said, “The technology has very real risks.”

“And, you know, the mechanism, how we address those risks is still under discussion,” Amodei said.

Trump suggested that about 10 people would be named to a committee to “watch over the whole enterprise” and said the accord would be “morally binding.” He also said he would name someone to oversee the agreement in coming days after consulting with industry.

Some of the actions outlined in the accord are measures these companies are already taking in some form or have previously committed to doing.

The intention of the accord balances the latitude needed for innovation with regulation, said Shri Narayanan, a university professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Southern California. That innovation is not just limited to improving the capabilities of these AI models, Narayanan said, but also to efforts to improve model safety and security.

Other experts are skeptical of putting “so much faith in self-policing,” like Robin Jia, an assistant professor of computer science at the University of Southern California. Jia said it’s crucial to ensure the leading labs’ intentions are “well-aligned with the broader interest of the American public.” He pointed to the recent disclosures of hacking incidents and said: “As the models get better, the consequences of such things are only going to get greater.”

Some also took issue with the accord’s vague, broad language. Alex Pascal, executive director of the Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, said: “The only way to reduce the risks and harms of AI to Americans is through robust legal liability, regulation and fundamentally changing the race dynamics that are driving unsafe decision-making by frontier AI developers whose costs are borne by the American people.”

Huang sat to Trump’s right during a White House luncheon meeting, according to a seating chart the president posted on Truth Social. Musk sat to Trump’s left.

Earlier Tuesday, Trump promised that the U.S. government wouldn’t limit the development of artificial intelligence or support calls for “guardrails” or other restrictions.

“I will never stifle the growth of a technology that will be bigger than the industrial revolution,” Trump said at the unveiling of an AI chatbot, America.gov, intended to help Americans navigate government services. “We can’t stifle it, and we’re leading by a lot.”

The unveiling of the AI government chatbot occurred at a daylong event in Washington during which multiple Trump administration officials celebrated a “Golden Age” fueled by what Trump insists on calling “super intelligence,” rather than artificial intelligence. Secretary of State Marco Rubio highlighted that the chatbot at America.gov could soon be used to apply for a first-time passport fully online, without the in-person visit to a processing center currently required.

Trump also said the executives had agreed to assuage the bipartisan opposition to data centers cropping up in local communities across the country by providing more financial support to local schools or taking steps to reduce energy costs.

“You’re going to see, data centers are going to be very popular,” Trump said. If the opposition continued, Trump suggested, “they’ll be forced to go overseas or other locations.”

Also Tuesday, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said in a television interview that the company is increasingly focused on safety. The day before, his company halted the rollout of a new model over safety concerns.

“We are pacing our progress, which includes sometimes not training a model,” he said on CNBC. “We have to do these in a way where we can make very confident safety cases and claims, so that people don’t have a bunch of anxiety.”

For his part, Trump on Tuesday portrayed the race to develop AI as largely a global competition between the United States and China. He said there would be a winner and a loser, with no “second place.”

The two countries agreed last week to establish a channel for handling AI-related incidents during Chinese President Xi Jinping’s visit to Washington. But Trump underscored Tuesday that he didn’t want to cooperate too much with China: “I didn’t want to do anything, because we’re leading. Why would I want to do anything?”

Associated Press journalist Kaitlyn Huamani contributed.

—Christopher Rugaber, Will Weissert and Meg Kinnard, Associated Press Writers

As the prices of memory and components soar, affording a new computer is becoming more and more challenging for some people. Average computer prices are expected to increase by as much as 20% before year’s end.

That’s forcing many computer owners to make do with what they have. But if your desktop or laptop is feeling sluggish, it doesn’t mean it’s obsolete. A few fairly easy steps could give you a speed boost that may not equal that of a new machine running the latest hardware, but will still feel like a notable leap from what you experience today.

Here’s how to tune up your machine for a lot less than you’d pay for a new device.

The older your laptop or PC is, the better the chances it has accumulated a layer of dust inside the case. (That’s even more likely if you have pets.) That dust acts like a blanket on the components and heat sinks, which can trigger thermal throttling in a device. That in turn slows down the CPU and/or GPU, resulting in lag or reduced performance.

Use compressed air to blow out the dust from your computer’s case, if you use a desktop. Be sure to hold any fans in place when cleaning them to avoid damage to the fan motor. If you’re cleaning up a laptop, short bursts of air through the vents can clean things up. You’ll want to clean your PC of dust every six months or so—and every three months if you have pets.

If you’re realizing you’ll be stuck with a particularly old machine for some time, it’s possible some components can be upgraded without having to buy brand-new (and expensive) replacements. Goodwill, for instance, resells donated technology in specialty stores, such as The Grid, and several of those items are sold online via Ebay. The organization also has partnered with Dell to support Dell Connect, refurbishing some electronics and sending nonfunctional parts to Dell for recycling.

If there’s nothing to be found at Goodwill or that’s affordable on Ebay, your own old computers might be able to give you a boost. Check to see if the hard drive or RAM in those devices is compatible with your current machine and consider adding that to your PC, assuming you have space and your power supply unit can handle the extra energy demands.

If your device has an old PCIe (Peripheral Component Interconnect Express) solid-state drive, you can buy an enclosure for that for just a few dollars, transforming it into an external drive that can quickly access data and greatly expanding your storage space.

Your hard drive could be clogged with junk files and applications that are slowing your system down as well. Open your Task Manager and head over to the start tab to disable any nonessential programs that slow your boot time. Clean out temporary files as well and uninstall apps you no longer use.

This is also a good time to do a deep scan for malware, which is a leading cause of computer slowdowns. Windows Defender is a good tool that most PCs have for this.

If you do find a virus or have a PC whose hard drive is crammed full of programs you don’t need, you might want to consider wiping it entirely and reinstalling your operating system and essential files and programs.

Step one in this, of course, is backing up all critical data, including documents, photos, and essential files. You’ll also want to be sure you have copies of your operating system as well as any programs you use regularly so you can reinstall them.

This is a time-consuming step that can be frustrating, but it can do away with bloatware, broken registry keys, clogged caches and more. It won’t make your hard drive any faster, but it can give you a temporary speed gain. Just keep a close eye on the apps and files you save moving forward.

Man, I’ve been waiting to write this one for a while. 

Generative AI is over.

Wait, what? No, not really. I like to get histrionic when I spit out these little proclamations that will be more concrete anywhere from three to nine months from now. Because I want you to have that sentence etched into your brain as you plan out what exactly it is you say you do here over the next three to nine months.

Because I don’t want to see you, three to nine months from now, still sending five-page reports full of AI slop when a single surgical paragraph will do. I don’t want to see you get silently downgraded when your sales deck has three “It’s not this, it’s that” phrases on three consecutive slides. And I don’t want to see you saving your SaaS company by bolting on a chatbot to replace your report interface or customer service agents and calling your product “AI native.”

Yeah, the bad news is that’s not Taco Tuesday for amphibian left-handers; it’s a critical mass understanding of how LLMs work.

The good news is the case for AI has never been stronger.

Look, I’ve been doing this AI nonsense for a long time. Sixteen years ago, I started talking about the time and place for generative AI. I rambled on for seven years. No one listened.

A little over three years ago, I started making a contrarian bet against generative AI in my public and personal writing. No one listened. 

But a funny thing happened. The bet paid off exponentially. Across reads, followers, subscribers and, most importantly, revenue, my numbers over the last three years have jumped anywhere from 10x to 100x and more.

I’m a 100x-er! Thanks, AI! Thanks for nothing!

Then I said SaaS was dead. No one listened.

Aw, man . . . 

But the thing is, I haven’t been anti-AI at all. Far from it. I’m an OG and still a fan.

I have been very singular, consistent, and vocal in my criticism. Actually, more of a warning:

“Don’t bet the farm on generative AI. It’s not new. The novelty will wear off. AI is still nascent.”

• So when “thought experts” started drowning us in generative AI slop, I took my shot.
• When people first started catching on to generative AI’s tics, I took my shot.
• When entrepreneurs started building businesses around generative AI chatbots, I took my shot.
• When CEOs started blaming AI for mass layoffs, I took my shot.
• When AI consultants started skipping over the necessity of data as the AI moat, I took my shot.

People started listening. About a year ago.

All along, I’ve been leaning into what’s coming with this awesome new evolution in processing power and compute packaging—which is really what we’re talking about when we say “AI.”

So let me lash out one more time. Because . . .

I finally took the jump a couple years ago and got back into AI consulting as the calls coming in stopped being about chatbot creation and started being about data, intelligence, prediction, and action. 

And now, a couple years later, this AI cycle is repeating in much the same way it did when we first unleashed our Generative AI platform 16 years ago, when our mantra was, “Put the most critical, insightful, actionable information at the top.” 

The rules are still the rules.

Rule No. 1: AI is a tool, not a replacement. Integrating AI without experienced human control at the helm is like asking a spreadsheet to make you breakfast. We’re finally figuring out that 100x productivity concentrated in one link in the chain does not increase the strength of the chain.

Rule No. 2: Human ingenuity is your source material. A workflow that isn’t stress-tested in the real world is automation that will fail in a way that knocks the entire system over. The reason why Amazon hasn’t been taken out by some weekend-vibe-coding AI upstart is not because of AI. Amazon uses way more AI than any weekend warrior. It’s because Amazon has hundreds of thousands of people who know and live the problems and the solutions. 

Unless they keep laying them off. 

Rule No. 3: Data enrichment is your moat. When everyone has access to the same computing power and tools, and those tools can be used to replicate brute force, a company’s competitive moat becomes surgical and is contained in the proprietary workflows that generate the data that no one else has or can get.

Rule No. 4: We’re entering the age of AI brevity. Less is more. And as these chatbots continue to yammer on in what’s probably an uncontrollable cycle of training and bloat-begetting-bloat, we’re no longer impressed. It’s no longer novel. We’re drowning in fluff we’re no longer reading, features we never asked for, and productivity we can’t wrangle. 

Passing along generative AI resultant sets without the filter of human ingenuity and decision-making to pare those results down to a known and verifiable set of the most critical, insightful, and actionable information is doing something anyone can do, doing it poorly, and not expecting anyone to notice.

That’s what I want etched in your brain. Because I know I’m going to get dragged for saying, “Generative AI is over,” but only for the next three to nine months.

If you like tech, AI, entrepreneurship, and the culture around it, please join my email list to get experienced, 100% human-written guidance peppered with jokes and obscure references.

—Joe Procopio

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This article originally appeared on Fast Company’s sister website, Inc.com. 

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