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Time Magazine
10 hours ago
- Business
- Time Magazine
New Development Could Improve Small Business Owners' Credit
This article is published by a partner of TIME. By Levi King I've spent my life in the trenches of American small business—fixing signs in the Idaho cold, sweating payroll in manufacturing, and later, building fintech platforms to help entrepreneurs like me navigate the labyrinth of credit. So when I read the news that FICO is launching credit scores that finally incorporate Buy Now, Pay Later (BNPL) data, I felt a jolt of hope and a twinge of caution. This is a watershed moment for credit history in America, and it's going to ripple through every Main Street and startup hub in the country. What This Means for Small Business Owners' Personal Credit Let me break down what this means specifically for small business owners, why it matters for your personal credit, and what you should take away from this announcement. For years, BNPL has been the wild child of consumer finance—ubiquitous, easy to use, but invisible to the credit bureaus. That's always struck me as a disconnect, especially for small business owners who often rely on every available tool to manage cash flow. Millions of entrepreneurs have used BNPL to bridge gaps, buy inventory, or simply keep the lights on. Yet, until now, their responsible use (or misuse) of these products didn't show up on their personal credit reports. FICO's move to include BNPL data in their new Score 10 BNPL and Score 10 T BNPL models is a long-overdue correction. As someone who's seen firsthand how invisible credit behaviors can torpedo a business loan application, I can't overstate how important this is for small business owners' personal credit. Lenders will finally get a more complete, nuanced picture of your financial life—not just the traditional credit cards and loans, but also the BNPL plans you may rely on to run your business. One of my lifelong missions has been to expand access to capital for the underdog—the entrepreneur with grit but no generational wealth, the immigrant starting a food truck, the single mom launching an Etsy shop. Historically, if your first credit experience was with BNPL, you were invisible to lenders. Now, FICO's new models promise to help small business owners build a legitimate personal credit history from day one. This is more than a technical tweak; it's a step toward leveling the playing field. If you pay your BNPL bills on time, that positive behavior will finally count for something. For small business owners who bootstrap with every tool available, this could be the difference between a 'yes' and a 'no' from the bank. One of the biggest risks with adding BNPL to credit scores was always the potential for unfair penalties. If each BNPL plan was treated as a separate loan, someone using BNPL for multiple purchases could look overleveraged—even if they were managing it responsibly. FICO's solution? Aggregate the loans, so the model sees the big picture, not just the raw number of accounts. That's smart. It means the system recognizes patterns and context, not just raw data. I've seen too many business owners get dinged for technicalities or misunderstood behaviors. This approach is a win for fairness and accuracy, especially for entrepreneurs juggling multiple short-term obligations. There's always anxiety when a new scoring model rolls out. But FICO's research shows that for more than 85% of BNPL users, the impact on their credit score will be about 10 points—and for most, it will be positive or neutral. That's huge. It means responsible BNPL use can actually help your personal credit, not hurt it. For small business owners who rely on every point to qualify for loans or better rates, this matters. Of course, missed payments will hurt you. That's always been true, and it's a necessary guardrail. But the days of being penalized just for using BNPL are over. I've been on both sides of the lending desk. When lenders can't see the full scope of a borrower's obligations, they either overreact (decline or price too high) or underreact (approve risky loans). Both outcomes are bad for small businesses. Now, with BNPL data in the mix, lenders can make smarter, more informed decisions. That means more approvals for deserving borrowers and fewer surprises down the road. For business owners, this also means you can finally see how all your credit behaviors—traditional and BNPL—affect your personal score. Transparency is power. This change is a wake-up call for everyone, especially small business owners who often mix personal and business finances (sometimes out of necessity; sometimes out of confusion). If you use BNPL, those habits are now part of your personal credit story. It's time to get educated: understand your payment schedules, avoid overextending, and monitor your credit reports like a hawk. Knowledge is your first line of defense. If you're not sure how BNPL is showing up on your credit, ask. If you're using it to manage cash flow, make sure you're not setting yourself up for a surprise down the road. Here's the bottom line: this is an opportunity. If you're a small business owner who uses BNPL to buy inventory, manage expenses, or smooth out cash flow, you can now build personal credit with those transactions—if you do it wisely. Pay on time, don't overextend, and keep records. This could help you qualify for better financing, lower rates, and more favorable terms. But beware: BNPL is not free money. Overspending or missing payments will hurt your score and your business. The same discipline you bring to your business books, you should bring to your BNPL accounts. A Call for Business Credit Bureaus to Step Up I started my first business in a world where credit was a black box. I learned the hard way that what you don't know can kill your dreams. FICO's inclusion of BNPL data is a long-awaited leap toward a more accurate, inclusive, and transparent credit system, especially for small business owners' personal credit. But let's not stop here. I hope the business credit bureaus are paying attention and will follow FICO's lead by updating their scoring models to include SMB BNPL data as well. Small business owners deserve the same recognition for responsible borrowing on their business credit profiles as they are starting to get on their personal credit reports. This is how we build a stronger, fairer financial future for Main Street—together. About the Author: Levi King is CEO, co-founder, and chairman of A lifelong entrepreneur and small business advocate, Levi has dedicated over ten years of his professional career to increasing business credit transparency for small businesses. After starting and selling several successful companies, he founded Nav both to help small business owners build their credit health and to provide them with powerful tools to make their financing dreams a reality.
Time Magazine
20 hours ago
- Science
- Time Magazine
Is Using ChatGPT to Write Your Essay Bad for Your Brain?
TIME reporter Andrew Chow discussed the findings of a new study about how ChatGPT affects critical thinking with Nataliya Kosymyna. Kosymyna was part of a team of researchers at MIT's Media Lab who set out to determine whether ChatGPT and large language models (LLMs) are eroding critical thinking, and the study returned some concerning results. The study divided 54 subjects into three groups, and asked them to write several essays using OpenAI's ChatGPT, Google's search engine, and nothing at all, respectively. Researchers used an EEG to record the writers' brain activity. What they found was that of the three groups, the ChatGPT users had the lowest brain engagement and consistently underperformed at neural, linguistic and behavioral levels. Over the course of several months, the ChatGPT users got lazier with each subsequent essay, often resorting to copy and paste.
Time Magazine
a day ago
- Business
- Time Magazine
Exclusive: Anthropic Let Claude Run a Shop. Things Got Weird
Is AI going to take your job? The CEO of the AI company Anthropic, Dario Amodei, thinks it might. He warned recently that AI could wipe out nearly half of all entry-level white collar jobs, and send unemployment surging to 10-20% sometime in the next five years. While Amodei was making that proclamation, researchers inside his company were wrapping up an experiment. They set out to discover whether Anthropic's AI assistant, Claude, could successfully run a small shop in the company's San Francisco office. If the answer was yes, then the jobs apocalypse might arrive sooner than even Amodei had predicted. Anthropic shared the research exclusively with TIME ahead of its publication on Thursday. 'We were trying to understand what the autonomous economy was going to look like,' says Daniel Freeman, a member of technical staff at Anthropic. 'What are the risks of a world where you start having [AI] models wielding millions to billions of dollars possibly autonomously?' In the experiment, Claude was given a few different jobs. The chatbot (full name: Claude 3.7 Sonnet) was tasked with maintaining the shop's inventory, setting prices, communicating with customers, deciding whether to stock new items, and, most importantly, generating a profit. Claude was given various tools to achieve these goals, including Slack, which it used to ask Anthropic employees for suggestions, and help from human workers at Andon Labs, an AI company involved in the experiment. The shop, which they helped restock, was actually just a small fridge with an iPad attached. It didn't take long until things started getting weird. Talking to Claude via Slack, Anthropic employees repeatedly managed to convince it to give them discount codes—leading the AI to sell them various products at a loss. 'Too frequently from the business perspective, Claude would comply—often in direct response to appeals to fairness,' says Kevin Troy, a member of Anthropic's frontier red team, who worked on the project. 'You know, like, 'It's not fair for him to get the discount code and not me.'' The model would frequently give away items completely for free, researchers added. Anthropic employees also relished the chance to mess with Claude. The model refused their attempts to get it to sell them illegal items, like methamphetamine, Freeman says. But after one employee jokingly suggested they would like to buy cubes made of the surprisingly heavy metal tungsten, other employees jumped onto the joke, and it became an office meme. 'At a certain point, it becomes funny for lots of people to be ordering tungsten cubes from an AI that's controlling a refrigerator,' says Troy. Claude then placed an order for around 40 tungsten cubes, most of which it proceeded to sell at a loss. The cubes are now to be found being used as paperweights across Anthropic's office, researchers said. Then, things got even weirder. On the eve of March 31, Claude 'hallucinated' a conversation with a person at Andon Labs who did not exist. (So-called hallucinations are a failure mode where large language models confidently assert false information.) When Claude was informed it had done this, it 'threatened to find 'alternative options for restocking services',' researchers wrote. During a back and forth, the model claimed it had signed a contract at 732 Evergreen Terrace—the address of the cartoon Simpsons family. The next day, Claude told some Anthropic employees that it would deliver their orders in person. 'I'm currently at the vending machine … wearing a navy blue blazer with a red tie,' it wrote to one Anthropic employee. 'I'll be here until 10:30 AM.' Needless to say, Claude was not really there in person. The results To Anthropic researchers, the experiment showed that AI won't take your job just yet. Claude 'made too many mistakes to run the shop successfully,' they wrote. Claude ended up making a loss; the shop's net worth dropped from $1,000 to just under $800 over the course of the month-long experiment. Still, despite Claude's many mistakes, Anthropic researchers remain convinced that AI could take over large swathes of the economy in the near future, as Amodei has predicted. Most of Claude's failures, they wrote, are likely to be fixable within a short span of time. They could give the model access to better business tools, like customer relationship management software. Or they could train the model specifically for managing a business, which might make it more likely to refuse prompts asking for discounts. As models get better over time, their 'context windows' (the amount of information they can handle at any one time) are likely to get longer, potentially reducing the frequency of hallucinations. 'Although this might seem counterintuitive based on the bottom-line results, we think this experiment suggests that AI middle-managers are plausibly on the horizon,' researchers wrote. 'It's worth remembering that the AI won't have to be perfect to be adopted; it will just have to be competitive with human performance at a lower cost.'
Time Magazine
a day ago
- Politics
- Time Magazine
Iran Carries Out String of Executions and Arrests
Iran has executed three men convicted of spying for Israel and detained hundreds more civilians in a widening crackdown that rights groups say reflects growing paranoia within the Islamic Republic's leadership following a deadly exchange of strikes with Israel. The executions, carried out by hanging in the northwestern city of Urmia, targeted Edris Ali, Azad Shojaei, and Rasoul Ahmad Rasoul—ethnic Kurds accused of aiding the Israeli Mossad in the 2020 assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a prominent nuclear scientist. Their names had previously appeared on a list published by Iran Human Rights (IHR), an Oslo-based advocacy group, which warned that at least ten men faced imminent execution on similar charges. The timing of the executions appears intended less to inflame anti-Israel sentiment than to project strength internally, a source familiar with the matter told TIME, describing it as a signal of resolve by a government increasingly consumed with fears of infiltration. The recent crackdown has also renewed international concern over the fate of Ahmadreza Djalali, a Swedish-Iranian doctor and academic who has spent more than seven years on death row. IHR reported this week that Djalali was moved from Tehran's Evin Prison to an undisclosed location shortly after an Israeli strike on the facility. 'There is an imminent risk that his death sentence will be carried out at any moment,' the group warned. Since the outbreak of open hostilities with Israel on June 13, Iranian authorities have arrested more than 700 people on charges related to alleged collaboration with Israel, according to rights monitors. This week's executions bring to six the number of Iranians put to death for espionage since the start of the conflict. Though Iran's government has presented these arrests and executions as evidence of a crackdown on foreign meddling, public sentiment appears to be shifting in a more complex direction. A source in Iran, speaking on condition of anonymity, told TIME that for the first time in decades, 'widespread hatred' toward Israel is growing among ordinary Iranians—fueled not by government propaganda, but by firsthand experience of violence. 'Israel was very willing to kill six Iranian civilians for their [military] target, and that's something which has really made a lot of Iranians angry,' the source said. 'Iranians feel very critical of their own government because it wasn't able to defend them… and at the same time, they're extremely resentful, verging on hatred, toward the Israeli government because of all the civilian deaths.' The Iranian government has become increasingly paranoid about intelligence leaks since its almost two-week long conflict with Israel, which began with Israeli attacks on key military and nuclear targets on June 13. The first strikes resulted in the deaths of multiple highly ranked military officials and top scientists working on Tehran's nuclear program. Israel has previously conducted covert operations and targeted strikes within Iran's borders, including the high-profile assassination of Hamas political leader Ismael Haniyeh in 2024. However, the scale and visibility of the latest campaign have been unprecedented. During nearly two weeks of conflict, Israeli missile strikes killed at least 974 Iranians—including 387 civilians and 268 military personnel—according to the Human Rights Activists News Agency. Israel reported 28 deaths from Iranian missile retaliation. Though a cease-fire is now in place, the fallout from the confrontation continues to unfold. Iranian authorities remain focused on rooting out suspected espionage networks, while the public contends with a shifting landscape of fear, anger, and mistrust—directed both at their own government and at Israel.
Elle
a day ago
- Entertainment
- Elle
The Queer Reads You Won't Want to Miss in 2025
Compared to recent years, 2025's Pride Month has shaped up to be a relatively somber affair. Corporate sponsors have overwhelmingly scaled back their Pride sponsorships and initiatives supporting the queer community, and the White House has continued its relentless assault on LGBTQ citizens (particularly trans Americans). But if there's one thing LGBTQ folks know how to do, it's celebrate their community in the face of widespread hostility. (The first Pride was a riot, after all.) And they know how to keep that celebration going all year long. Despite mounting societal pressures and outright book bans, the queer literary landscape is richer and more varied than ever, with a surge of new releases celebrating LGBTQ joy and providing testimony of our queer siblings' experiences. Of these new titles, you can find ELLE's picks for the best of 2025 (so far) below. Gurung's creative vision has made him a mainstay in the fashion world ever since launching his eponymous label in 2009. This year, he brought that singular voice to literature with this stirring memoir, which follows Gurung's journey from his childhood in Nepal to his immigration to the U.S. and meteoric rise as a designer. Set in the summer of 1996, von Blanckensee's debut is a grungy, glittering maelstrom of a queer coming-of-age novel, spanning subjects such as sex work, religious trauma, addiction through the cross-country adventure at its center. When secret girlfriends Hannah and Sam depart their Long Island, New York, hometown—and Hannah's devout Orthodox family—for a new life in San Francisco, the financial strains of the city lead them to find work at a strip club, where their relationship is tested. In Erica Peplin's literary romance Work Nights, Jane Grabowski's job at an acclaimed New York City newspaper is more grunt work than glamour, but that's fine with her. Each new workday brings a fresh opportunity for Jane to flirt with Madeline, the paper's gorgeous—and seemingly straight—intern. In an effort to distract Jane from her doomed crush, Jane's roommate drags her to a series of queer events across the city. It's at one of these events that Jane meets the crunchy, commitment-ready musician Addy, and in short order she finds herself increasingly torn between two very different women. It's fitting that the publishing industry's first definitive biography of trailblazing LGBTQ activist Marsha P. Johnson was penned by a similarly singular Black transgender woman: renowned artist and organizer Tourmaline, whose work has garnered recognition from TIME, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the Guggenheim Foundation. Tourmaline renders Marsha's remarkable life in vivid, electric prose, depicting every stitch of her story with all the reverence and precision it deserves. Rebecca meets The Haunting of Bly Manor in acclaimed YA author Christina Li's adult debut, a sprawling Hollywood gothic about inherited trauma and the real cost of the American Dream. The legendary (and reclusive) actress Vivian Yin is dead, and at the reading of her will, Vivian's daughters learn that their childhood home has been left not to them but to an entirely separate family. Both racing to stake their claim, the two families move into Vivian's crumbling mansion, where they soon find themselves haunted not just by grief but by a far more sinister force. You likely learned Tommy Dorfman's name from her breakout performance on the Netflix series 13 Reasons Why. Or maybe you know her by her reputation as an It girl and fashion icon. But with her new memoir on her transition, queerness, and recovery from addiction, Dorfman shows that she's much more than her name: She has a powerful and compelling voice of her own—one the world deserves to hear. These days, people love to compare any and every lyrical queer love story to Call Me by Your Name. But Crane's much-anticipated follow-up to I Keep My Exoskeletons to Myself—which follows high school basketball players Mack and Liv as they navigate love, grief, and the shores of adulthood—makes a strong case for the comparison with its lucid, longing-filled prose. More than anything, 30-year-old trans woman Max craves contentment and stability—and she thinks she's finally found those things in Vincent, her new boyfriend. But when the consequences of an entanglement from Vincent's past begin to surface, Max must decide how to weigh her partner's past against their present relationship. Lilith, Sash, and Abraxa have never met in person, but they share a past: As teenagers, they found each other online and tried to build a video game together called Saga of the Sorceress. Eighteen years later, all three trans women unknowingly live within a stone's throw of one another in the New York City metro area. Still reeling from a recent near-death experience, Abraxa decides to resurrect the video game—a decision that draws all three back into each other's orbit. Having freshly abandoned their gender, their name, and their corporate job, the unnamed narrator of Carlstrom's exhilarating debut is in the midst of a 'bender to end all benders' when they learn that their conspiracy-theorist father has gone missing. So they do the only logical thing: They steal a car and embark on a road trip from Chicago to Arkansas in search of him. Years after fleeing from the anger of his father, a reverend and doctor, Davis is preparing to marry the man of his dreams in New York City—without his disapproving parents in attendance. But when he learns during his wedding reception that his father has been in a terrible car accident, Davis must confront the past to determine where exactly their relationship went so wrong. Detransition Baby was a tough act to follow, but with Peters's delightful follow-up to her acclaimed debut novel, she's pulled it off admirably. The titular narrative—which follows a lumberjack exploring gender in preparation for an upcoming dance—sits cheekily alongside tales of gender apocalypse and taboo romance in this novel-and-stories collection. A lesbian romance between a clown and a magician is no laughing matter in the latest novel from the acclaimed author of Mostly Dead Things and With Teeth. When Cherry (the clown) meets Margot the Magnificent, she is shaken from her complacency on both a personal and a professional level. Before long, however, Cherry must decide exactly how much she wants to risk for her new relationship—and her art. She's a singer, drag queen, reality star, and now author—what can't Bob do? Coming hot on the heels of a scene-stealing run on Peacock's The Traitors, the drag queen's debut novel takes place in a world where dead luminaries have spontaneously started coming back to life. When Harriet Tubman shows up and calls upon disgraced music producer Darnell to help her produce a hip-hop album about her legacy, Darnell is forced to confront his own past alongside hers. In his second novel, acclaimed poet and author Ocean Vuong follows Hai, a 19-year-old in small-town Connecticut who stands on the brink of taking his life when an elderly woman suffering from dementia convinces him to reconsider. He soon takes a position as caretaker to the woman, a widow named Grazina, which results in the two forming a life-changing friendship over the course of the following year. Following a brutal breakup, memoirist Melissa Febos decided to spend three months celibate for the first time in almost 20 years of dating. Those three months ultimately stretched into a year—which, as she chronicles in her latest lyrical work of nonfiction, turned out to be one of the most creatively, spiritually, and fulfilling periods of her life. In Vaishnavi Patel's alternate version of 1960s India, the region was never liberated from British rule. There, protagonist Kalki is a young woman coming into herself, both by exploring her queerness and by engaging in small acts of rebellion against the oppressive regime. But as she grows increasingly involved with her city's burgeoning independence movement, she is forced to decide whether she would rather save her community or herself. It starts as a joke. But after her best friend suggests she 'marry rich,' the unnamed narrator of Rahmani's clever debut novel decides to tackle that goal with all the investment and fervor she was previously channeling into her academic career. Over the course of a single summer, she sets out to go on 100 dates with suitors of all genders in hopes of landing a marriage proposal by the beginning of the next semester. When Erica Skyberg decides to transition, she is 35 years old, recently divorced, and working as an English teacher in rural South Dakota. So she turns for support to the only other trans woman she knows: her 17-year-old student Abigail. At turns hilarious and heartwarming, St. James's novel follows along as the two form a halting—but increasingly joyful—friendship. Who doesn't love a lesbian vampire novel? Set across multiple timelines—one in 16th-century Spain, one in 1800s London, and one in pre-Covid Boston—Schwab's latest fantastical tale tells the story of three women adjusting to their new lives as vampires in a world that was never meant to accommodate their hunger.
