All News (Page 399)

President Trump is turning to some of the biggest names in Silicon Valley—including Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Oracle executive chairman Larry Ellison and Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang—to help guide U.S. policy on AI and other key technologies through a new White House advisory council.

A press release from the Office of Science and Technology Policy said the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, or PCAST, “brings together the Nation’s foremost luminaries in science and technology to advise the President and provide recommendations on strengthening American leadership in science and technology.” It added that the council will focus on topics “related to the opportunities and challenges that emerging technologies present to the American workforce, and ensuring all Americans thrive in the Golden Age of Innovation.”

Each president since Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1933 has established a PCAST advisory committee of scientists, engineers, and industry leaders, the press release said.

Trump established the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology by executive order in January, saying that “as our global competitors race to exploit these technologies, it is a national security imperative for the United States to achieve and maintain unquestioned and unchallenged global technological dominance.”

The council, which can include up to 24 members, will be co-chaired by White House AI and crypto czar David Sacks and senior technology adviser Michael Kratsios. The newly appointed group includes Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Marc Andreessen, Google co-founder Sergey Brin, former Oracle CEO Safra Catz, Dell Technologies founder and CEO Michael Dell, Oklo co-founder and CEO Jacob DeWitte, Coinbase co-founder Fred Ehrsam, entrepreneur and investor David Friedberg, physicist and University of California, Santa Barbara professor John Martinis, Commonwealth Fusion Systems CEO Bob Mumgaard and AMD CEO Lisa Su.

Catz and Su are the only two women, while the lineup leans heavily toward industry leaders and investors shaping the commercial AI boom – Martinis is the only academic researcher. 

Notably absent are OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, any executives from Microsoft, and Tesla, SpaceX and xAI CEO Elon Musk, who previously led the Trump administration’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE).

Musk has previously taken issue with perceived White House slights. In 2021, the Biden administration held an event on electric vehicles, but Tesla was not invited despite being the top U.S. EV seller. It was a decision Musk criticized, saying it “was odd” that Tesla wasn’t invited.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Americans are waiting longer than ever to buy their first home. And for many, it’s not happening until they’re middle-aged.

The median age of the first-time homebuyer rose to a record high of 40 last year, according to the National Association of Realtors, up from the early 30s roughly a decade ago. The average American today will get married and have their first kid in their late 20s or early 30s, according to Census and CDC data. Homebuying was once coupled with those milestones. But the housing market has grown increasingly unaffordable thanks to high interest rates and low supply, effectively reshaping the American life timeline.

And Zillow CEO Jeremy Wacksman doesn’t see that changing anytime soon. 

“The fact that it’s been going up is this affordability challenge,” he told Fortune in an exclusive interview, referring to the median age of the first-time homebuyer. “People are having to wait longer to save up and find their way into a down payment.” 

“We aren’t expecting any relief in the short term,” he added. “I think it’s just going to take a while.”

Home prices are up 60% compared to pre-pandemic figures as the country endures a prolonged housing shortage, estimated at about 4.7 million according to a 2025 Zillow report. The situation has grown so dire some potential buyers are looking to their parents to pay their down payment. 

The current economic outlook isn’t helping, either. Rising gas prices are eating away at Gen Z’s rent payments. And nearly three-in-five Americans today fear the encroaching AI job apocalypse could make housing even more unattainable. One of the central pillars of the American dream is becoming increasingly decoupled from the other key rites of adulthood.

What’s making homeownership so hard for younger buyers

Wacksman’s diagnosis of the situation is on par with what other economists, policy experts, and politicians have uttered: supply shortages. 

He said one of his main concerns is homeowners delaying sales as they wait for mortgage rates to fall to more tolerable levels. Bringing those sellers back to market would add much-needed inventory and help ease prices. Instead, many remain shackled with “golden handcuffs,” as current conditions incentivize them to stay put.

“Sellers who’ve been holding on to their low mortgage rate will finally say, ‘Okay, I’ve been putting off the move,’” he said. “’Now the gap in my mortgage rate is tolerable and I’ll move and new listing supply will come online.’” 

The CEO also lauded the Trump administration’s efforts on housing affordability, including the executive order President Donald Trump signed to reduce regulation around mortgages. He’s also hopeful a bipartisan housing bill—a measure aiming to reduce housing regulatory barriers and cap corporate ownership of homes, that passed the Senate with an 89-10 vote—could move the needle on the housing supply.

“What we’re most excited to see is that this is a big topic now, and it’s a topic across Washington on the supply side,” he said.

How Zillow aims to use AI to address the housing crisis

While many of the factors contributing to the housing affordability crisis are structural, Wacksman believes Zillow can at least improve the conditions for those who still think homeownership is out of reach. 

Wacksman said an education gap remains a high barrier for many prospective buyers, as most don’t fully understand the complexity of housing transactions. The company is betting the launch of its new AI mode, announced Wednesday, will help close that gap. The feature allows users to interact with Zillow in a conversational format similar to ChatGPT.

“Tools like ours—Zillow AI mode, buyability in our financing tools—they can help educate buyers,” he said. “They can teach you: ‘How could I get it done? There are different mortgage options. Maybe I can look in a different market.’” According to a press release, Zillow AI mode can handle everything from answering affordability questions and comparing options to booking tours.

The company also launched Zillow Preview last week, a tool meant to expand listings on the platform by permitting agents and brokers to showcase “coming soon” listings. Wacksman thinks bringing pre-listings onto the platform will increase supply by publishing more house listings on Zillow, and help to address the housing shortage.

Still, the CEO said there are limitations to how the company can tackle the housing situation. “We can educate,” he said. “We can’t build more houses.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

There was a simple narrative about Rishi Sunak when he was defeated in the U.K. general election of 2024. The Stanford MBA graduate and former Goldman Sachs analyst would quit Parliament, leave the U.K. and hot-foot it to California for lucrative roles towards the top of some hyperscaler or other. Sunak kept insisting it wasn’t true, despite the fact he often wore regulation Silicon Valley white trainers. Few people believed him. 

Two years later, and Sunak has confounded the sceptics. He is still a Member of Parliament for a rural constituency in the north of England (AI use for dairy farmers is one of his specialties). And, although he is now an advisor to Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, and Anthropic, his work is resolutely anchored in the U.K. The Labour government is regularly in touch. 

“My work with the two technology companies has left me even more convinced, not just about how much AI is going to change, but how quickly it’s going to change things too,” Sunak told a Goldman Sachs conference for small businesses held in Birmingham, England’s second city 100 miles north of London. 

Read more: As war continues to rage, the World Economic Forum is the latest to postpone Gulf conference in Saudi

“It’s not just about transforming our economy—as much as that is important. I believe that AI is going to lift the floor for humanity and it’s going to do that because it’s going to make it possible for everyone, no matter where they are around the world, to have access to the best healthcare and education that money can buy. And I think that is an extraordinary democratizing force.” 

He told the room full of chief executives that speed of adoption is “everything”. If you are not planning for the era of applied AI (in use in your business), then the risk is being left behind, sitting on the wrong side of a ‘K-shaped economy’. 

“Like steam power, like electricity, artificial intelligence is a general-purpose technology which can and will change every aspect of our economy, of our society,” Sunak said. “With new technologies, we’ve all been through these cycles. There’s lots of hype out there, and people get carried away, but I genuinely believe that it is a conservative estimate to say that artificial intelligence will have twice the impact of the Industrial Revolution in just half the time.” 

The question-and-answer session with the business leaders is revealing. Most feel they need support with making decisions as CEOs. Others know they need to train their staff so that new ways of being productive can be co-created, not ordered from above. Many fear losing their jobs, sometimes through ignorance rather than data. One founder flagged “false confidence” with splashy AI tools as worthy of note. 

“It’s clear that when it comes to AI, the responsibility for it can’t sit in the IT department,” Sunak said. “It has to start with the leaders. Research from McKinsey shows that when leaders demonstrate ownership and commitment, they find that AI deployment in their organizations is far more successful. That doesn’t mean that you have to have deep technical expertise. You don’t need to become a coder overnight, but it’s about awareness [and] it’s about mindset.” 

“When I go around the country talking to businesses, the single biggest mistake I see is that people start with the technology first and then try and find a use case for it which is completely the wrong way around.” 

“The best thing to do is to look at your business first and figure out where the pain points are, where are those tasks that employees are really frustrated with, where are the processes that slow things down, or where are the bottlenecks that are limiting your growth? That is probably the best way to identify a set of initial AI use cases.” 

One of the sessions at the Goldman Sach’s conference is titled “AI—friend or foe?”. Neither, of course. The key will be a CEO’s awareness of where AI can drive growth and revenue opportunities whilst retaining the very essential human leadership and guidance that makes each business and division unique. If everyone uses the same AI tools in the same way, then everyone risks offering the same AI-led solutions. And a world of AI-slop is not where anyone wants to be. 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

A scientist who pioneered the modern food processing safety standards used around the world was awarded this year’s World Food Prize, the organization announced Wednesday, crediting his work for averting millions of cases of foodborne illness and reducing food waste.

Huub Lelieveld of the Netherlands earned the award after six decades spent advancing ways to improve food safety and advocating for trade regulations that allow safe food to get around the world more easily.

“I just did what I thought was right,” Lelieveld said in an interview with The Associated Press. “I want everybody to have enough food but … it should also be safe.”

Lelieveld began his career as a food researcher at Unilever at a time when mechanisms for manufacturing safe food products were, to him, “illogical,” he said.

Food was often sterilized or chemically preserved after production, and equipment needed to be shut off once or twice each day to be cleaned, which was both difficult and time consuming. The processed food also required heavy use of preservatives, salt, sugar and acids to reduce the risk of contamination, which detracted from flavor and nutrition.

“I realized very soon that they did things in the wrong way, in my view,” Lelieveld said. “From the beginning, I’ve been working on … convincing people that you should do it in a different way.”

Lelieveld worked with colleagues to develop hygienic production methods and equipment, making food manufacturing more efficient and less reliant on chemicals.

Having scaled the processes at Unilever and shown that they worked, Lelieveld said the company gave him permission to publish the research for dissemination and use globally.

“My philosophy was: You should not compete on food safety,” Lelieveld said. “Spreading the technology, the hygienic technology, was very important.”

Unsafe food causes 600 million foodborne illnesses and 420,000 deaths each year, according to the World Health Organization.

“Lelieveld was selected for translating food safety science into global regulations, legislation and practice, a movement spanning dozens of countries,” Gebisa Ejeta, chair of the Laureate selection committee, said in a statement. “His initiatives are estimated to have benefited millions of consumers worldwide.”

The Iowa-based World Food Prize was founded by Norman Borlaug, who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1970 for his work to dramatically increase crop yields and reduce the threat of starvation in many countries. The agricultural science honor includes a $500,000 award.

“Lelieveld lives by his conviction that access to safe food is a universal right—a philosophy shared by the late Dr. Norman Borlaug,” Mashal Husain, World Food Prize Foundation president, said in a statement.

After four decades at Unilever, Lelieveld founded the Global Harmonization Initiative in 2004 to promote consensus in food and trade regulations around the world. Drawing on a network of a few thousand scientists around the world, the nonprofit organization also works to address critical food security challenges and to facilitate food safety education.

GHI “is extremely useful because it has this enormous pool of knowledge about food safety and food protection,” Lelieveld said.

Lelieveld said challenges for broad access to safe food and water persist, and he hopes to see a system where people can produce safe food and water locally even if the movement of goods across borders is restricted.

“You can’t stop the transport of water through the air, with the clouds,” he said. “You can produce safe water everywhere, but we need to distribute this knowledge to the people that need it and that is the biggest challenge.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Harvard University has had a turbulent few months. The school has faced leadership turmoil, renewed scrutiny over its former president Larry Summers’ past ties to Jeffery Epstein, and an escalating clash with the Trump administration—including a federal lawsuit filed just last week alleging antisemitism on campus. 

None of it has knocked it off its perch. The Ivy league institution was once again deemed the No. 1 “dream school” among college applicants, according to a new survey by The Princeton Review.

Harvard has consistently ranked near the top throughout the survey’s 24-year history. Although it was dethroned last year by Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), this year’s revival suggests that sustained controversy has done little to dent its appeal. 

“Harvard ultimately reigns as the world’s most desirable university with unparalleled brand recognition, alumni achievement and history,” Jamie Beaton, founder and CEO of Crimson Education—who holds both undergraduate and graduate degrees from the university—told Fortune. “Trump’s battle with Harvard has only made the school more notable and famous.”

While admissions for the incoming fall cohort are still being finalized, Harvard has only become more competitive over the years. Of the nearly 48,000 applications to its class of 2029—who started this past fall—only about 2,000 were admitted, an acceptance rate of around 4%. By comparison, the acceptance rate 18 years ago was about 9%.

Harvard graduates are entering the workforce with near six-figure salaries—and little student debt

For many Harvard students, the payoff of making it through the rigorous application process appears to be tangible. 

In a survey of the class of 2025 by The Harvard Crimson, 95% of seniors said they would choose Harvard again. Early career earnings are likely part of the reason: roughly half of respondents expected to earn more than $90,000 in their first job, while about one in five anticipated salaries of $130,000 or higher—figures that far outpace national averages for new graduates.

The price tag, meanwhile, keeps climbing. Total billable costs this academic year—tuition, fees, housing, and food—reached $86,926, a roughly 9% increase over the past two years. Yet only 17% of seniors reported graduating with student loan debt. Harvard waives tuition entirely for undergraduates whose families earn $200,000 or less annually.

But Harvard isn’t alone in driving demand—and the composition of this year’s list suggests that prestige reigns supreme in the minds of most applicants. Adam Nguyen, founder of admissions consulting firm Ivy Link, isn’t surprised.

“Even in a market where families talk constantly about cost, practicality, and ROI, the schools that continue to dominate the imagination are still the ones with the strongest prestige, signaling power, alumni networks, and global brand value,” Nguyen told Fortune. 

The 10 top “dream colleges” of students in 2026

1. Harvard University
2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
3. Stanford University
4. Princeton University
5. New York University
6. Yale University
7. Columbia University
8. University of Pennsylvania
9. University of Texas–Austin
10. University of Michigan–Ann Arbor

More Gen Z are questioning the value of degrees—and seeking alternatives in the skilled trades

For all the allure of the Ivy League, those institutions represent a sliver of the American college experience—and the broader picture is more conflicted.

Cost anxiety has become the defining concern of the application process. The plurality of student and parent respondents in this year’s Princeton Review survey, 35%, cited impending debt levels as the biggest concern about the college application process. That’s a dramatic shift from the survey’s early years: in 2003, only 6% of respondents chose cost as their top concern. 

The skepticism doesn’t end at graduation. More than a third of all graduates now say their college diploma was a “waste of money,” according to a survey by Indeed. Among Gen Z specifically, that figure rises to 51%. And with artificial intelligence reshaping the job market for entry-level talent, these worries are only expected to grow.

It’s pushing a growing number of young people to take a harder look at alternatives. Enrollment in vocational and trade programs has grown more than 20% between 2020 and 2025, according to National Student Clearinghouse Data. And business leaders like Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang have highlighted that opportunities to land secure, six-figure-paying blue-collar jobs are on the rise—thanks in part to the data center boom. 

“This is the largest infrastructure build-out in human history that’s going to create a lot of jobs,” Huang said at the World Economic Forum earlier this year.

“We’re talking about six-figure salaries for people who are building chip factories or computer factories or AI factories.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Jamie Dimon, who has led America’s largest bank JPMorgan for 20 years and through multiple recessions, blasted remote work and offered a stern warning for any younger generations who want to move up the career ladder: get into the office. 

“If you go to a meeting with me, you got my full friggin attention the whole time,” he said at the Hill and Valley Forum, which brought together leaders from Washington and Silicon Valley, on Tuesday. 

During the session titled “Wealth, Power, and the Next American Century” Dimon said remote work only works well for certain jobs like call centers, but for everyone else, including young people and managers alike, in-person working is best. Young people, especially, he said, need to work in-person because they are still learning.

“They learn by going on a sales call. They learn by seeing you make a mistake. They learn by how you deal with the mistake,” Dimon said, adding that remote work also fails to help young people develop their emotional intelligence.

The problem is universal, Dimon said, and managers should also get comfortable sitting in the office. Video calls, which he compared to game show Hollywood Squares where contestants sit in a real life tic-tac-toe board, allow for much fewer checkups than would happen in person when you can ask someone directly for an update. Working from home, Dimon said, causes less ownership of a project, less curiosity, and, using a Muhammad Ali tactic, tires people faster.

“There’s very little follow up, a lot more game playing, you know, rope-a-dope type of politics,” he said.

Plus, he added, “a lot of people aren’t paying attention at all,” as many of them are on their phones while on a video call, a trend which he didn’t notice early on, he said.

The remarks are not new for the 70-year-old, who has often protested remote work for early-career employees, advocating for an “apprentice system” where younger workers learn from more experienced veterans.

“You can’t learn working from your basement,” he said in a Bloomberg interview last year.

Previously, Dimon has complained that remote work has made it more difficult to reach employees, especially on Fridays, which he said is “not how you run a great company.”

Other executives, such as Amazon’s Andy Jassy and Instagram Chief Adam Mosseri, have also pushed to bring employees back to the office for a full five days a week in the past two years. Still, not every business leader agrees. Shark Tank star and O’Leary Ventures chairman Kevin O’Leary has often advocated for remote work to better attract top candidates. In a video earlier this month, O’Leary said, “I’d rather hire somebody who can execute and sit in their basement or in their backyard.”

JPMorgan announced its own five-day in-office policy last year, prompting more than 1,200 employees to sign a petition urging the company to keep its flexible hybrid work model. During a town hall meeting last February, Dimon lashed out at employees for signing what he saw as a meaningless petition.

“Don’t waste time on it,” Dimon reportedly said during the town hall. “I don’t care how many people sign that f—ing petition.”

Gen Z Pushes Back

Despite what Dimon says, young people are not thrilled at the prospect of working from an office full time. While employers have leveraged the shaky job market to force employees back to the office full time, nearly 40% of Gen Z and Millennial employees said they would take a pay cut in exchange for more flexibility with where they work, compared to 32% across generations.

The research on remote work also doesn’t quite align with what executives like Dimon have said. A Bureau of Labor Statistics analysis from 2024 found a statistically significant positive correlation across 61 industries between the pandemic-era rise in remote work and productivity growth, among other positive outcomes. At the same time, Gallup’s State of the Workplace report from 2025 found fully remote workers actually report the highest engagement rates at 31%, compared to 23% for hybrid and on-site workers who are remote capable.

While Dimon acknowledged JPMorgan wants to keep its workers happy, he also said the company has to adapt to what its customers want. 

“We’re not in business so my employee’s happy. I’m in business so my customer’s happy, and I want my employee to be happy, but not at the expense of the customer.” 

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com