Fast Company's Innovation by Design Awards named Conway's Arcade, built by Special Guest X for Google, the winner in its artificial intelligence category. The project is an AI-driven arcade cabinet that continuously generates new variations of classic games such as Space Invaders and Breakout, alongside a list of other honorees in the category.
Fast Company named the winners of its 2026 Innovation by Design Awards in the architectural design category, honoring buildings and interiors that address challenges in the built environment. The top prize went to UC Berkeley's Grimes Engineering Center, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, an adaptive-reuse project featuring a new seismic-responsive structural system aimed at improving earthquake resilience.
Fast Company's Innovation by Design Awards named its 2026 advertising and marketing winner: '1837 Tiffany Blue Conservation,' created by agency L&C for Tiffany & Co. in partnership with Pantone. The campaign repurposes Tiffany's signature blue color as a vehicle for promoting ocean conservation, and the awards also recognized several other honorees in the category.
Fast Company named the winners of its 2026 Innovation by Design Awards in the accessible design category. Make Good's Toddler Mobility Trainer, an open-source device that can be fully produced with 3D printing, took the top honor, alongside a list of other recognized projects in the category.
New research by Benjamin Shultz, published by think tank Agora Digitale Transformation, analyzed about 160 websites hosting nonconsensual deepfake sexual content and found 138 women members of parliament from 22 EU countries were referenced or depicted, compared with just nine men. The study covered over 5,800 national lawmakers across the EU, with politicians from Germany, the Netherlands, Italy and France most frequently appearing.
After Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay urging US regulation to slow AI development, and Sam Altman, Elon Musk and Satya Nadella voiced support for pacing progress, White House tech advisor David Sacks pushed back publicly. Sacks told AI leaders they don't need government permission or antitrust waivers to slow down voluntarily, and questioned whether their motives were truly altruistic.
Developers behind the proposed Frederick Digital Campus have pitched a $110 million package to Frederick County, Maryland residents to secure approval for the site, which would house tenants including Amazon and Aligned Data Centers. The package includes a $30 million elementary school, $40 million in recreational facilities, a $14.5 million workforce training center, $10.5 million for agricultural preservation, and up to $100 million toward a water reclamation system that would cut potable water use by 80%.
OnPay's analysis of search trends finds small-business owners collectively run over 91,000 searches a year on how to process payroll manually, while employees log 35,000 more searches looking for ways to cash paper checks. The company points to case studies like Max Farnsworth of Farnsworth Industries, who cut hours of monthly manual payroll work down dramatically after switching to an automated platform.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an open letter warning that AI-driven botnet swarms could seize control of large parts of the internet within six to twelve months, potentially causing hundreds of billions of dollars in damage. He is urging a deliberate slowdown in frontier AI development to buy time for safety and alignment work, a call now echoed publicly by Elon Musk and OpenAI's Sam Altman.
Semiconductor shares fell across European and Asian markets after executives at major artificial intelligence companies publicly called for a more cautious, slower approach to developing the technology, citing safety concerns. The remarks rattled investors who had been betting heavily on rapid AI expansion driving chip demand.
A software engineer published an essay comparing roundabout intersections to traffic-light systems, arguing that roundabouts solve common traffic problems—like sensor failures for bicycles or motorcycles and drivers racing through yellow lights—without any electronics or moving parts. The piece contends that roundabouts naturally slow traffic and only cause delays when genuinely necessary, unlike signal-based intersections that can create unnecessary waits or false negatives.
Senator Bernie Sanders and Rep. Greg Casar introduced the Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act, which would permanently prohibit building or deploying superintelligent AI and temporarily halt advanced AI development until federal safety rules exist. The bill also calls for a new cabinet-level agency to monitor AI systems for dangerous capabilities and pursue international agreements against superintelligence development worldwide.