Artificial intelligence, automation, and digital connectivity are fundamentally reshaping how work is organized. Despite this, corporate workplaces, due to how they’re structured, are struggling to keep up.

According to EY, the average lifespan of an S&P 500 company has plummeted from over 65 years in the 1940s to just 15 years today. The speed of technological progress is outpacing the adaptability of our work systems, many of which are designed for a slower and more predictable era. Businesses that once thrived on longevity and stability must now embrace agility, continuous learning, and dynamic workforce models.

As newly emerging technologies like AI continue to evolve, human-AI collaboration, sustainability, and deeper integration of technology with human ingenuity will become increasingly important in the workforce. The mandate for business leaders is clear: Organizations must move beyond outdated hierarchies and rethink work structures in a way that empowers both people and machines.

The industrial revolution moved slowly. This one won’t

The integration of AI-based technologies is already influencing the work humans do and how they do it. Mustafa Suleyman, the CEO of Microsoft AI, coined the term “artificial capable intelligence” (ACI), which is the point at which AI can solve complex problems without human input. Within the next couple of years, we are likely to see the rise of AI agent swarms and multiple autonomous systems working together to achieve successful outcomes.

This doesn’t mean humans will become obsolete, but the role of human oversight is shifting from task execution to resource allocation and strategy. Dan Shipper, CEO of Every, calls this shift a move from the knowledge economy to the allocation economy, which he defines as “how well you can allocate and manage the resources to get work done.” Rather than simply managing work, people will need to learn how to best allocate work to AI and then manage and audit it. This is a new way to think about work for the majority of workers today.

Unfortunately, the cumbersome way today’s corporations are structured makes it difficult for them to continuously upskill their workforces in lockstep with technology advancements. Organizations are wired for efficiency and scalability, not for learning and adaptability. And, the current labor market dynamics are only exacerbating this AI skills challenge.

A radically new labor market

The U.S. labor market is undergoing a profound transformation, reshaping the way we think about work and employment. While job growth remains steady, there are significant shifts in workforce participation and hiring practices. Labor force participation is lagging behind pre-pandemic levels, with millions of working-age adults choosing not to actively engage in the workforce. Many of these individuals have left due to skill mismatches, lack of training opportunities, or changing priorities in the wake of the pandemic.

Partly as a result, businesses are increasingly facing a skills gap that’s compounded by the number of job openings outpacing the available talent. In fact, there are currently 9 million job openings in the U.S., but the number of unemployed individuals actively seeking work remains much lower, highlighting the disconnect between employer needs and workforce availability.

This shift is further driven by the rise of freelance and contingent work, which is rapidly becoming a mainstream career choice. Today, nearly 40% of the U.S. workforce is engaged in contract or freelance work, a number that is expected to reach 50% by 2050. This trend is especially pronounced among younger generations, such as Gen Z, who are increasingly gravitating toward portfolio careers instead of traditional full-time roles. At the same time, the hiring process has become more impersonal, with automation and ghosting trends leaving job seekers frustrated. As businesses struggle to navigate these dynamics, workforce participation continues to evolve in ways that challenge both employers and employees alike, demanding a new approach to talent acquisition and retention.

Skills-driven guilds as the future of work

As AI adoption accelerates, traditional corporate training programs are proving too slow and misaligned with real-world demands. Meanwhile, companies still rely on full-time employment models that fail to support today’s increasingly independent and project-based workforce.

The solution? Skills-driven guilds (SDGs).

SDGs function as modern, tech-enabled talent ecosystems that bring together workers, businesses, and educational resources into specialized communities. Unlike traditional hiring, SDGs provide a structured yet flexible career framework, where professionals continuously upskill and connect with new opportunities, while businesses tap into expert talent exactly when they need it.

Upwork’s recent qualitative research with Wikistrat invited a group of 20 experts to forecast how work structures are likely to evolve through 2030. One area of consensus involved the notion that companies will have fewer full-time employees and more freelancers who they hire for specific skills and limited projects. However, the experts acknowledged that assembling these teams will require the development of new talent management systems that are low-friction, trustworthy, and transparent. As work becomes more dynamic and project-based, rigid corporate structures are failing to support workers or businesses effectively.

How skills-driven guilds work in practice

A skills-driven guild operates much like a work marketplace, but with built-in training, trust, and ongoing engagement. Today, platforms like Upwork already function as proto-SDGs by offering businesses access to specialized freelance talent on demand.

Here’s what makes SDGs different:

• Verified, high-quality talent: Workers in SDGs demonstrate their expertise through past projects, AI-driven assessments, and peer reviews—not just traditional degrees or résumés.
• Continuous learning and upskilling: SDGs offer a structured learning path, where professionals train in high-demand skills alongside real-world work, often in partnership with companies or training providers.
• Community-driven knowledge sharing: Members gain access to mentorship, career resources, and industry connections, similar to traditional professional guilds—but without being tied to a single employer.
• Faster hiring and reduced friction: Businesses instantly match with the right professionals and integrate them into projects seamlessly, cutting down the time and cost of hiring.

Who pays for a guild? Why would companies invest?

The economics of SDGs work differently than traditional employment. Instead of long-term contracts and overhead costs, businesses pay for access to curated, highly skilled talent only when needed. A couple different models could include:

• Enterprise-sponsored guilds: Large organizations could fund guilds in exchange for preferred access to top professionals in AI, engineering, or creative fields.
• Freelancer-driven guilds: Independent professionals contribute to a guild for networking, training, and job opportunities, similar to professional associations.

Companies that invest in SDGs not only secure a pipeline of skilled workers but also gain a strategic advantage—future-proofing their workforce against technological disruptions while maintaining agility in a rapidly evolving market.

Building an AI-empowered workforce that thrives

The shift toward more flexible, skills-driven employment is already underway. Forward-thinking organizations are embracing fractional executive roles, AI-assisted workforce augmentation, and talent marketplaces to stay competitive. Those who invest in skills-driven guilds will not only attract the best talent but also future-proof their workforce for decades to come.

The organizations that thrive will be those that see skilling as an ongoing journey, not a one-time event. Workers who continuously adapt and upskill will lead the next wave of innovation, ensuring economic resilience in an era of rapid disruption.

The question is no longer if the traditional corporation will evolve, but how quickly leaders are willing to build a skills-based, networked future of work.

The opinions expressed in Fortune.com commentary pieces are solely the views of their authors and do not necessarily reflect the opinions and beliefs of Fortune.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

• Billionaires including Elon Musk and Warren Buffett are offering millions of dollars in prizes for the lucky basketball fan who can select a perfect March Madness bracket.

If you want to be one of the first people to step foot on Mars for free, now’s your chance: you just have to be unworldly at predicting basketball games.

Elon Musk’s X Bracket Challenge is offering basketball fans a free trip to the Red Planet on SpaceX’s Starship vehicle if you can correctly pick a perfect March Madness bracket. But don’t get your hopes up. The coin flip odds are about 1 in 9,223,372,036,854,775,808 (that’s 9.22 quintillion), according to the NCAA. If you know ball, the odds are brought down to 1 in 120.2 billion. 

This improbability isn’t expected to stop any of the millions of Americans of all generations who plan to fill out an NCAA Divison I basketball tournament bracket this year. In fact, the stakes are higher than ever, with Musk joining Warren Buffett and sports outlets to offer prizes worth millions of dollars to any luck bracket guessers.

Billionaires’ bracket promises

Because humans aren’t expected to get to Mars for years, SpaceX has standby prizes. Musk’s company will provide the perfect bracket winner $250,000, one year of free Starlink service, and a chance to send a personal item to space on a Falcon 9 launch. If there’s no perfect bracket, the best bracket will win $100,000. This venture into sports is likely part of Musk’s goal to make X an “everything app.”

Warren Buffett keeps his prizes simple: cold hard cash. He once offered $1 billion to anyone if they could pick a perfect bracket in 2014. But he’s since lowered the award to $1 million and limited the competition to his Berkshire Hathaway employees.

As he approaches 95 years old, he’s eager to give away money for a sport he loves. This year, he’s lowered the stakes by promising to award $1 million to someone who wins at least 30 of the game’s 32 first-round games

“I hope it’s this year,” he told The Wall Street Journal. “We made it easier this year than ever.” 

Musk alluded last month that AI, like his own Grok, could be the secret to creating a perfect March Madness bracket and winning challenges, such as Buffett’s.

Everything you can win with a perfect—or pretty good—bracket

Submitting March Madness brackets can feel like a full-time job if you want to maximize your possibilities of winning. Many outlets, including ESPN, CBS Sports, NCAA, and USA Today, have online portals for fans to submit their picks for the men’s and women’s tournaments, and each has its winning possibilities:

• USA Today: Win $1 million with a perfect bracket in either tournament. The best bracket can win $25,000.
• ESPN: Upwards of $135,000 in prizes are up for grabs for brackets for both tournaments.
• CBS Sports: Entered to win a Nissan Armada by submitting both brackets. If your bracket is among the top 10% of point scorers, CBS Sports will put you in a contest to win a trip to next year’s men’s or women’s Final Four competition.
• NCAA: If the men’s or women’s bracket is within the top 1%, you are entered into a contest to win a trip to one of next year’s Final Four competitions.

If that wasn’t enough, you could win free food for life at some local and regional restaurants across the country. For example, Jesse’s Burgers & Shakes in Texas is offering free burgers for life for a perfect bracket. The best bracket entered in Currito’s, found in Florida, Maryland, and Illinois, competition can win one free meal per week for a year. 

Prediction markets are getting in on basketball, too. Robinhood is launching a dedicated hub offering contracts related to March Madness games. 

With four newcomer teams to the men’s tournament this year—Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, University of Nebraska Omaha, High Point University, and University of California San Diego—this year’s March Madness results may be even more unpredictable—and possibly more exciting than ever before.

But considering many games are played during the workday, bosses may not be happy. One study found that workers will spend six paid work hours focused on sports-related activities during the tournament, such as monitoring the games, checking on their brackets, or yapping with co-workers.

March Madness begins this week with the first four games on Tuesday and Wednesday evening and first-round games on Friday. The championship game will be played on Monday, April 7.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

NASA’s two stuck astronauts headed back to Earth with SpaceX on Tuesday to close out a dramatic marathon mission that began with a bungled Boeing test flight more than nine months ago.

Butch Wilmore and Suni Williams bid farewell to the International Space Station — their home since last spring — departing aboard a SpaceX capsule alongside two other astronauts. The capsule undocked shortly after 1 a.m. Eastern and aimed for a splashdown off the Florida coast around 6 p.m. Eastern, weather permitting.

The two expected to be gone just a week or so after launching on Boeing’s new Starliner crew capsule on June 5. So many problems cropped up on the way to the space station that NASA eventually sent Starliner back empty and transferred the test pilots to SpaceX, pushing their homecoming into February. Then SpaceX capsule issues added another month’s delay.

Sunday’s arrival of their relief crew meant Wilmore and Williams could finally leave. NASA cut them loose a little early, given the iffy weather forecast later this week. They checked out with NASA’s Nick Hague and Russia’s Alexander Gorbunov, who arrived in their own SpaceX capsule last fall with two empty seats reserved for the Starliner duo.

“We’ll miss you, but have a great journey home,” NASA’s Anne McClain called out from the space station as the capsule pulled away 260 miles (418 kilometers) above the Pacific.

Their plight captured the world’s attention, giving new meaning to the phrase “stuck at work.” While other astronauts had logged longer spaceflights over the decades, none had to deal with so much uncertainty or see the length of their mission expand by so much.

Wilmore and Williams quickly transitioned from guests to full-fledged station crew members, conducting experiments, fixing equipment and even spacewalking together. With 62 hours over nine spacewalks, Williams set a record: the most time spent spacewalking over a career among female astronauts.

Both had lived on the orbiting lab before and knew the ropes, and brushed up on their station training before rocketing away. Williams became the station’s commander three months into their stay and held the post until earlier this month.

Their mission took an unexpected twist in late January when President Donald Trump asked SpaceX founder Elon Musk to accelerate the astronauts’ return and blamed the delay on the Biden administration. The replacement crew’s brand new SpaceX capsule still wasn’t ready to fly, so SpaceX subbed it with a used one, hurrying things along by at least a few weeks.

Even in the middle of the political storm, Wilmore and Williams continued to maintain an even keel at public appearances from orbit, casting no blame and insisting they supported NASA’s decisions from the start.

NASA hired SpaceX and Boeing after the shuttle program ended, in order to have two competing U.S. companies for transporting astronauts to and from the space station until it’s abandoned in 2030 and steered to a fiery reentry. By then, it will have been up there more than three decades; the plan is to replace it with privately run stations so NASA can focus on moon and Mars expeditions.

Both retired Navy captains, Wilmore and Williams stressed they didn’t mind spending more time in space — a prolonged deployment reminiscent of their military days. But they acknowledged it was tough on their families.

Wilmore, 62, missed most of his younger daughter’s senior year of high school; his older daughter is in college. Williams, 59, had to settle for internet calls from space to her mother. They’ll have to wait until they’re off the SpaceX recovery ship and flown to Houston before the long-awaited reunion with their loved ones.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com