As longtime participants in movements for social justice, we have come to realize that the threat posed by artificial intelligence is not separate from those posed by war, climate change, attacks on immigrants, economic inequality and authoritarianism. It has, in fact, the potential to accelerate all of these.

AI gives governments new tools for...Read more

The prevalence of uncontested elections in America—70% of all races in 2024—receives little attention. That’s partly because these races are often for local offices in small districts, but it’s also because many people don’t see these silent elections as a big problem. Some argue the absence of a challenger signals satisfaction with ...Read more

War in the Middle East. The hottest summer on record in the U.S. AI getting as scary as "Terminator 2: Judgment Day." An eroding coastline. A president who spends more time posting pathetic memes than improving the lives of everyday Americans.

It sure seems like we're living in the End Times, right?

Why, we haven't even reached the most ...Read more

The healthcare affordability crisis is crushing everyone, but it has become downright calamitous for small businesses. Survey after survey after survey shows that employers expect healthcare costs to rise nearly 10% on average in 2027, a figure that could be twice as high for small firms.

Those businesses — a key driver of the U.S. economy �...Read more

A lot of people used to think about college the way a lot of people now think about protein: good for you in any quantity, and the more the better. How times have changed.

Not only is the share of people who see college as a worthwhile investment in decline, but some smaller schools are digging into their endowments to stay afloat. Even popular...Read more

A popular metaphor for climate change is the boiling frog, the idea being that we’re getting cooked so slowly that we don’t realize it until it’s too late. In reality, if humans are the frogs, they’re not just being cooked alive and already feeling it, they’re reaching out of the pot to crank up the burner.

The United Nations ...Read more

Silicon Valley leaders keep painting artificial intelligence doomsday scenarios, yet they also can’t stop racing to build and sell it. They often point to China as the reason they have no choice, even as the post-ChatGPT era suggests the fiercest pressure comes from one another.

Yet the prevailing assumption is that cooperation with Beijing ...Read more

It’s becoming harder for Anthropic PBC to justify some of the most unfalsifiable circular logic to ever come out of Silicon Valley: the pursuit of artificial superintelligence, which by its own admission could kill a lot of humans.

Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon recently resigned, saying that his previous employer and its rival OpenAI were ...Read more

The rapid backlash to data centers and artificial intelligence has taken many in the tech and finance worlds by surprise.

Understandable. Only a few short years ago, states and municipalities were competing with each other to lure data center developers, dangling tax incentives for projects they thought would create jobs and generate tax ...Read more

The shock of a cargo airplane crash at Miami International Airport was still fresh, five people were dead, flights were delayed — and Miami-Dade’s most powerful politicians were at odds over who got to speak first at a news conference.

The confrontation caught by a hot mic Sunday between Sheriff Rosie Cordero-Stutz and a staffer for Mayor ...Read more

In his November 2024 victory speech, President Donald Trump said, “I’m not going to start a war, I’m going to stop wars.”

He promised “peace through strength,” then put Fox News weekend host Pete Hegseth of Forest Lake at the helm of the Department of Defense.

Hegseth is the only Minnesotan in Trump’s Cabinet. I wish he were ...Read more

Are Social Security benefits too generous? Some fiscal hawks and classic conservatives say the answer is yes, and see the upcoming depletion of the trust fund as an opportunity to rein them in. Social Security was meant to be insurance against poverty, they say, not the sole source of income for a middle-class retirement. The program needs to ...Read more

When DeepSeek’s reasoning model burst onto the scene last year and put Chinese artificial intelligence on the global map, the internet responded by probing its views on Taiwan or Tiananmen Square.

Unsurprisingly, the AI tool demurred or straight-up lied. But the gotcha moment obscured an important question. Would it matter to businesses ...Read more

The Labor Department’s release of its August jobs report landed just as college students swarmed into Boston. The two events are coincidental, but shouldn’t be.

College students, new or returning, should pay attention to such reports. The U.S. labor market bounced back in August as employers added 162,000 jobs, according to the Associated ...Read more

News flash: U.S. Sen. John Fetterman is still an embarrassment.

The Pennsylvania Democrat enjoys one of the cushiest jobs in America, but he can’t perform basic duties like voting, attending committee hearings, or meeting with constituents.

Fetterman’s disdain for the job — which comes with a $174,000 annual salary, free healthcare, and ...Read more

Most people are at least skeptical of data centers, if not outright opposed. And yet, if you follow tech news, data centers are presented as inevitable. If we allow them, we risk consequences. We’re told the same goes if we don’t allow them. This coming collision between public opinion and economic drive threatens to shake our society in a ...Read more

One year ago, the federal government launched Operation Midway Blitz in Chicago. Four days later, a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agent shot and killed Silverio Villegas González in Franklin Park after he dropped his children off at school.

What followed is now well documented on real-time video and victim outcries. Victims and ...Read more

President Donald Trump returned to office after campaigning on inflation, immigration, crime, trade, energy independence and foreign wars. Yet several prominent features of his second-term agenda — prediction markets, cryptocurrency derivatives and massive artificial-intelligence data centers — were scarcely discussed during the campaign and...Read more

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — If artificial intelligence doesn’t destroy humanity and there are actually future generations that look back, Sept. 8, 2026, may come to be known as “Coxon Day.”

That would be a reference to 27-year-old Jacob Coxon, an AI researcher and whistleblower at Anthropic (and previously OpenAI) who resigned in protest of ...Read more

During the 2016 election, 8 million years ago, there was a big debate about whether we should take the many outrageous things President Donald Trump said seriously or literally, or both, or neither. Somehow, even as Trump’s rhetoric regularly attains new heights of ridiculousness, that debate is still relevant. And too many of us are still ...Read more