AI depends on data. Every search, click, and pause adds to a behavioral model that predicts what we will want next. Shoshana Zuboff, professor emerita at Harvard, described this process in The Age of Surveillance Capitalism. She explains how companies turn human experience into raw material for prediction and profit.

Lately, it feels like every second headline on the internet is either about AI… or job cuts. And in between those headlines are real people — friends, colleagues, former teammates — reaching out, looking for clarity, connection, or simply someone to talk to about their careers and what’s next.

Fear is primal. Evolution gifted us with it for a reason—to protect us. It sharpens attention, increases vigilance, and primes the body to respond to danger. In the ancestral wild, that meant outrunning a predator or sheltering from a storm. But while our environments have changed dramatically, our brains haven’t caught up. They still respond to perceived threats with the same urgency as physical danger. The result? We live in a world where the fear system is chronically acti