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What Does the Science of Climate Change Really Look Like?
Editor’s Note: This is the second in a three-part series on how the Right should think about environmental and climate policy. Read Chris Barnard on Reclaiming Environmental Policy from the Left. More than a decade ago, the world’s governments negotiated and signed the Paris Climate Agreement, committing to hold global warming well below 2 degrees Celsius. In the following years, climate had immense cultural power. Greta Thunberg emerged. Fortune 500 companies established net-zero plans. The U.S. got the Inflation Reduction Act. Then the pendulum swung back. President Donald Trump returned to the Oval Office, speaking of green energy as a “scam” and carbon footprints as a “hoax” and on all matters of international policy emphasizing bilateral engagement and power over globalism and cooperation. The technology companies that had been at the forefront of net-zero pledges and green leadership discovered the importance of all-of-the-above power to their visions for artificial intelligence and began quietly postponing or removing their targets. On the left side of the political spectrum, rising concerns about inflation and cost pushed climate lower down in the stated priorities of voters and stump speeches of politicians. The moment is ripe for a reset on the politics of climate change and for conservatives especially to chart a course that acknowledges and addresses the real challenges in plausible ways. So what should we think about climate change as we enter a post-peak climate era? If it is neither an apocalypse nor a hoax, what will hold up as a durable view of climate change? And how does it project onto the concerns and priorities of the right-of-center’s emerging coalition? New to Commonplace_? Subscribe below to get the magazine in your inbox._ Subscribe A Solid Foundation As the politics and economics of climate careened over the past ten years, the physics carried on regardless. In 2015, the year the Paris Climate Agreement was adopted, the world emitted 41.2 gigatonnes of carbon dioxide. By 2025, emissions had risen only 2.4%, to 42.2 gigatonnes, because falling emissions from land use offset increasing emissions from fossil fuels. But slow growth in annual emissions is not rapid decline, let alone net-zero, so carbon dioxide kept accumulating in the atmosphere, going from 399 to 426 parts per million. Global temperature kept rising too, from about 1.1 degrees Celsius above the 1850–1900 average in 2015, to 1.4 degrees above it in 2025. None of this should surprise anyone. Even most prominent skeptics, like the authors of the 2025 report commissioned by the Trump administration’s Department of Energy, accept the basic physics. Carbon dioxide added to the atmosphere at industrial volumes accumulates and traps heat that would otherwise escape to space. That heat warms the upper ocean and increases temperatures at the surface. Increased ocean heat and melting of land ice cause sea levels to rise. Changes in the climate become noticeable to us as subtle shifts in temperature and precipitation, seasons arriving early or late, changes in the surrounding ecosystem, and weather extremes. The much more meaningful debate is not about whether these things are happening, but about what it all means for human societies. (While it is a proxy measure of overall risk, no one experiences global surface temperature.) This debate invokes at least three interesting questions: how much today’s warming is showing up in regional climate trends, how much more warming we should anticipate, and how extreme weather events can be understood in the context of climate change. Recent scientific advances give us new insights into each of these, but there is still much to learn. This is the context in which the next generation of conservative leaders will be the first to deal with significant climate change as a fact, not a forecast. It will be with them for their entire careers. Our evolving scientific picture of climate change will come from weather and climate records stretching further into the past, new kinds of observations in the present, better modeling tools for the future, and simply more time to observe the emergence of climate signals and their tangible effects on ecosystems and communities in the United States and around the world. The policy landscape will be shaped by not only the impacts of changes in the climate, but also by the ways in which societies respond and by the emergence of new technologies for both altering the trajectory of emissions and adapting to new climate realities. Global climate records now show the fingerprints of warming in different phenomena around much of the world. The IPCC, in its most recent assessment report, documents warming trends over all land regions, even as natural variability adds substantial variance to local trends. And the highest temperature extremes have become more intense and frequent, almost everywhere, since the 1950s. Scientists are highly confident that these changes are attributable to human influence. But confidence in detecting trends and attributing them to human influence degrades across heavy precipitation events; drought trends are heterogeneous and not attributable to human activity with great confidence. For hurricanes, tornadoes, and other severe storms there is even less confidence in trends or their relationship to climate change. In general, a fair summary of the evidence is that for well-observed phenomena, like surface temperature or heavy rainfall, with a clear relationship to warming, our multidecadal observations are consistent with human influence overcoming natural variability over long time periods and extremes increasing. For regions that are sampled more sparsely, or phenomena with a higher noise-to-signal ratio, we will need to observe them longer to understand the magnitude of the climate signal or improve dynamical understanding using models and observations together. But for Climate For those who can’t wait, we also have new techniques that attempt to understand the role climate change has in influencing particular extreme events. When the climate is changing and disaster strikes, it is natural to ask whether that disaster was somehow “caused” by climate change. For scientists and policymakers acting in good faith, answering that question helps develop a more accurate picture of the problem, how it may be getting worse, and what preparations we should be making to respond to it. It may, at some point, give some weight to how liability is assigned by courts or adaptation funding is distributed by society. But how we ask this question is extremely important. It is easy to get the analysis wrong by discounting the role that meteorology plays. As meteorologist Theodore Shepherd explained in a clear 2016 review of climate attribution methods, “if a weather or climate event is truly extreme in the present climate, then perforce it requires unusual meteorological conditions, which means that climate change is at most a contributing factor.” Share Scientists have two ways to probe climate as a contributing factor, both of which have entered media coverage of extreme weather events. One asks a probabilistic question: How much more likely is a particular event (e.g., a temperature record over a particular area) amid global warming? The answer involves using historical records and computer simulations to estimate the likelihood of such an event in both a changed and a preindustrial climate. The findings are less about the specific event, and more about events of that nature. The other question is: How has the changed climate affected the specific event in question? Here, scientists try to understand what a similar event would have looked like in the preindustrial climate. This is sometimes called the storyline approach, where the story is the specific meteorological details of the event. These methods offer ways to test the intuition of scientists about real weather extremes. In late June and early July of 2021, a persistent high-pressure ridge, or heat dome, set up over the Pacific Northwest and an extraordinary heat wave affected the area from Oregon to British Columbia. For six days, it shattered temperature records across the region and hundreds died from heat-related causes, in an area where such high, and persistently high, temperatures were well outside of experience and many live without air conditioning. Scientists have studied its connection to climate change using multiple approaches. This specific event was created by a rare combination of meteorological factors, a strong high-pressure ridge created the conditions for extreme heat, which occurred on top of higher average temperatures in the region from global warming. Probabilistic analyses showed that climate change increased the likelihood of such an event by at least 8-fold to more than 100-fold. One standout example found that such an event had effectively zero probability of occurring in the preindustrial climate. The enormous range in these assessments reflects how hard it is to estimate probabilities of events at the tail of the historical record. Estimates of the effect on the temperature of the event are more clustered. A recent review paper documents how multiple methodologies have found a positive influence, roughly 1-2 degrees Celsius of an anomaly that exceeded 15 degrees, of climate change on the temperature magnitude of the event. Multiple studies have investigated and found some positive influence of climate change in other extreme events. Attribution studies found climate likely increased the heavy rainfall that accompanied Hurricane Helene in North Carolina and surrounding regions in 2024. The extensive fires that struck Los Angeles in 2025 illustrate how the causal chain can become messy, though. Studies do detect a positive influence of climate on the event’s likelihood, but while climate change likely contributed to underlying aridity, it would not have played a role in the heavy winds or land practices that preceded disaster. These event attribution studies will become more common for extreme, or damaging, weather events. They can be produced quickly, and often are reported before peer review. As the Pacific Northwest heatwave example shows, when multiple methods converge on a positive attribution, the finding should probably carry some weight even if you have to be careful about accepting the results from a single study. I expect that as climate change proceeds and the climate thus departs further from a preindustrial counterfactual, the influence will become more detectable across a variety of extreme events and more easily identified. This will be used to cast blame, but can also be used to inform how communities and society adapt to ongoing change. We May Still Be Surprised One positive development, insofar as less climate change is better, has been that our central estimates for future climate change should probably be revised downward. Mostly, that is because the high-end warmings that scientists regularly analyzed about ten to 20 years ago, driven by high emissions throughout the twenty-first century, now appear to be somewhere between unlikely and impossible. At one time, the upper end of mainstream climate projections extended well into 4 to 6 degrees Celsius of warming by the end of this century, which, models suggest, would have wrought enormous real-world damage. Current energy and policy trends now point toward 2.5 or 3 degrees. Damages and risks are commonly modeled as increasing steeply with more warming, so this is already a better-than-previously-expected outcome for the climate (which is independent of the physical response to emissions). But we should maintain a wide range for plausible outcomes and prepare for the possibility of being surprised. Emissions trajectories are subject to deep uncertainty, the physical climate response is still developing, and whatever change occurs in the climate will then be mediated through unpredictable economic, social, and political institutions. Over the past decade, the pace of warming surprised some keen observers and appeared to accelerate, though not yet outside the range of expectation provided by climate models. The reasons for that apparent acceleration are being actively studied (as was the apparent pause in warming from 1998 to 2012), but no single driver has emerged. Some blame it on the El Niño, variability which would have no bearing on climate. Some think it is a result of factories in East Asia and global shipping fleets cutting aerosol emissions, which in the strongest version of the argument would indicate higher climate sensitivity to carbon-dioxide emissions. Others are more measured, not yet ready to draw solid conclusions as to whether climate projections require revision. We will have to see. Long-Term Thinking Climate change asks us to think over long time scales. But the pace of human-driven warming is compressing a large global change into a century. Changing weather patterns and extreme events are already causing adjustment costs and damages and will do more. Adaptation will help, but it is not free. For some communities, these costs will erode livelihoods and well-being, and may force migration. Are we prepared for large-scale managed retreats in the United States? Thankfully, American wealth, geographical diversity, and moderate climates may leave us better prepared than many around the world. But wealthy countries can still suffer serious disruption from narrowly concentrated costs, even if they appear entirely manageable in aggregate. Readers of Commonplace are familiar with the challenges of rapidly adapting to economic forces. The displacement that came from the China Shock is barely perceptible in aggregate GDP and employment data, but it affected millions of people and those people were far less mobile than economic models tended to assume. Deindustrialization rippled through the nation with enormous effects for not only our economic vitality, but also our national security. The forces surrounding climate change may not be so different; the world gets richer and must accept some diffuse costs. Those may be modest overall, but cause all manner of unpredictable effects with which policymakers must cope. In the case of the China Shock, our faith in a growing pie served us poorly. We’ll need to do better on climate. Leave a comment
Trump officials considering AI executive meeting on the sidelines of Xi visit next week
Executives of major technology and artificial intelligence companies are expected to travel to Washington, DC, next week for Chinese leader Xi Jinping’s state visit to the White House — and some Trump officials are contemplating a meeting with them on the sidelines of the high-stakes summit, sources familiar with the plans tell CNN.
iOS 27.2 Beta Previews New Apple Intelligence Health App
The first beta of iOS 27.2 includes Apple's redesigned Health app, giving developers a chance to try out the features ahead of launch later this year. Apple's developer notes for the feature say the Health app is being tested in this beta, but it won't be in the launch version of iOS 27.2. It will instead come later in the year. The Health app will incorporate Apple Intelligence to turn data and metrics collected by the Apple Watch into personalized guidance.
iOS 27.2 Beta Previews New Apple Intelligence Health App
The first beta of iOS 27.2 includes Apple's redesigned Health app, giving developers a chance to try out the features ahead of launch later this year. Apple's developer notes for the feature say the Health app is being tested in this beta, but it won't be in the launch version of iOS 27.2. It will instead come later in the year. The Health app will incorporate Apple Intelligence to turn data and metrics collected by the Apple Watch into personalized guidance.
Congress faces AI test as debate explodes over industry regulation
The Senate will get its first sneak peek Wednesday at just how hard it could be to pass even the most narrow of artificial intelligence legislation amid a growing debate over whether, if at all, to regulate the technology that industry leaders warn may pose doomsday threats to humanity. But do not expect the effort, […]
Specialties Honor Roll: Health Law
Health care is big business, and it’s constantly changing. New medicines and medical devices enter the market, regulations change and artificial intelligence is quickly changing the health care landscape. Ads for prescription drugs and health products are everywhere, while debates over access to care continue to make headlines. Behind all of it are legal issues. […]
macOS 27 Golden Gate: The Ars Technica review
It's both a "Snow Leopard update" and a major leap for Apple Intelligence.
Not Starship. Not Starlink. This Is the Part of SpaceX's Business That Could Lift It Into the $3 Trillion Club.
SpaceX's artificial intelligence (AI) business is proving its worth in an arena dominated by hyperscalers.
Ayble Health banks $16M series A to expand AI-driven precision digestive, autoimmune healthcare
Ayble Health secured a $16 million oversubscribed series A funding round to accelerate its expansion into artificial intelligence-driven precision digestive and autoimmune healthcare. | Ayble Health says it is currently in-network with most commercial health plans, covering more than 80 million patients through its various partnerships.
AI regulation debate intensifies as Whoop CEO Will Ahmed discusses health tech
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Vice President JD Vance push for AI self-regulation. Plus, Whoop Founder and CEO Will Ahmed discusses utilizing artificial intelligence to track fitness, sleep and stress.
Editorial: AI’s logic is no substitute for human emotion
Artificial intelligence may be the closest thing our age has produced to “Star Trek”’s Mr. Spock: brilliant, analytical and seemingly governed by pure logic. Ask AI a question, and it
A top Democratic donor says time is running out to stop Americans from hating AI
LinkedIn co-founder and influential Democratic donor Reid Hoffman says industry and government must show Americans how they can benefit from artificial intelligence.
What Comes Before Stomach Cancer? Researchers Are Finding Out.
Call it a “gut feeling.” For some stomach cancers, the first signs may appear years before a diagnosis. At Sutter Health Research Institute, Dr. Su-Ying Liang is helping lead that work. Through Gastroshare, she and researchers at Stanford University are using artificial intelligence and electronic health record data to study early changes in the stomach […]
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Preferred Networks Form Capital and Business Alliance-- Accelerating joint development of cutting-edge AI technologies for the intelligence and autonomy of machinery and systems in mission-critical applications --
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
Lynchburg solo business owners turn to AI for backend support
Solo business owners in Lynchburg are incorporating artificial intelligence into their day-to-day operations.
Mikel Arteta Makes Big Mikel Merino Claim After Ipswich Win
Mikel Merino captained Arsenal and found the net at Ipswich as Mikel Arteta praised the midfielder’s intelligence, versatility and growing influence within the squad.
SMBC adds head of AI to Charlotte office
Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp.’s head of artificial intelligence for its Americas Division will be based in Charlotte, where the Japanese bank is in the process of setting up a second U.S. headquarters. Ron Dodge, who has spent the past nine years as a senior director and chief technology officer at Ally, will work with business, […]
Mark your calendars: A Googlebook 'celebration' is happening next month
Google is reportedly sending out invites for an event where it will debut "the first laptop designed for Gemini Intelligence"
Bannon, Sanders want to stop threat of AI
Sen. Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon both spoke at a pro-human event, illuminating artificial intelligence concerns spanning the political spectrum.
Kash Patel again denies firing Iran experts before Iran war
Patel insisted to a Senate committee that FBI staff fired from an Iran counterintelligence unit were technically "not experts."
Tech CEOs call for AI regulation. Trump and Congress are not rushing to act
The technology industry's increasingly urgent warnings about the potential harm of artificial intelligence are slamming into political intransigence in Washington, offering a fresh test of the federal government's willingness and ability to confront what may become a defining issue of the era.
AI fears bridge political divide as Sanders and Bannon join DC event
Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon join forces at a Washington, D.C. "pro-human" event to raise alarms over the dangers of artificial intelligence.
Vance steers clear of AI regulation during ‘rah-rah political speech’ for House GOP
Vice President JD Vance did not address calls for guardrails to be placed on artificial intelligence development during a Tuesday morning meeting with the House Republican conference. The vice president spoke to GOP lawmakers at the Republican National Committee as a final pep talk heading into the November elections. But multiple GOP members emerging from […]
OpenAI says it’s working with Anthropic, Google on AI safety
OpenAI is working on steps to address artificial intelligence safety issues with its top competitors Anthropic PBC and Google DeepMind, escalating industry efforts to respond to a groundswell of concern
Tech CEOs call for AI regulation. Trump and Congress are not rushing to act
WASHINGTON (AP) — The technology industry’s increasingly urgent warnings about the potential harm of artificial intelligence are slamming into political intransigence in Washington, offering a fresh test of the federal government’s willingness and ability to confront what may become a defining issue of the era. President Donald Trump is leading the opposition to recent calls […]
Cranbrook Institute of Science Hosts ‘Artificial Intelligence: Your Mind & The Machine’
The Cranbrook Institute of Science in Bloomfield Hills will present “Artificial Intelligence: Your Mind & The Machine,” the first traveling museum exhibition developed by The Relayer Group, a New York-based consulting and development firm specializing in AI.
Bayer Leverkusen and BVB Are Interested in Barcelona’s ‘New Lahm’
German giants are scouting Xavi Espart, a versatile 19-year-old talent whose tactical intelligence and defensive flexibility at Barcelona have drawn comparisons to a legendary World Cup winner.
Knowtex launches frontier healthcare AI lab
Artificial intelligence company Knowtex launched a frontier AI lab for healthcare, aimed at developing and rigorously evaluating clinical AI tools for accuracy, auditability and clinician trust.
Robots and AI find a hidden reaction inside 135-year-old chemistry
Chemical reactions are often written as simple equations: starting materials go in, and a product comes out. In reality, the samesubstrates can follow many different pathways depending on their concentrations, temperature, catalysts, and other conditions. Exploring all of these possibilities by hand is practically impossible. Now, advances in laboratory automation and chemical artificial intelligence are allowing researchers to systematically map this vast “reaction hyperspace”—and uncover chemistry that may have remained hidden even in reactions studied for more than a century. To address this question, scientists led by Prof. Bartosz A. GRZYBOWSKI, Director of the Center for Algorithmic and Robotized Synthesis within the Institute for Basic Science (IBS) used an automated robotic platform to explore 960 different sets of conditions for the Biginelli reaction, a classic multicomponent reaction first reported in 1891.
GE HealthCare launches AI-driven operations system
GE HealthCare announced Tuesday the launch of a new artificial intelligence-enabled SaaS application to help healthcare organizations optimize resources and expand care access. | The application—dubbed CareIntellect for Operations—can forecast capacity constraints up to 72 hours in advance, the company says.
Live updates: Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon to join diverse speakers at ‘Pro-Human’ AI conference
Live updates and the latest news as lawmakers, actors and religious leaders join ‘Pro-Human’ summit to discuss curbs on artificial intelligence, while Trump has characterized concerns about AI development a “hoax.”
Georgia politics: Mail ballot ruling, Cobb plans, AI voting concerns
From a major U.S. Supreme Court decision affecting mail ballots to new concerns about artificial intelligence and Georgia's voting system, several developments could affect voters ahead of the midterms.
Chewy Eyes Pet Health, AI and Clinics to Drive Its Next Growth Phase
Chewy (NYSE:CHWY) is prioritizing U.S. health services, customer spending expansion and artificial intelligence capabilities as it seeks to build on its pet retail foundation, Chief Executive Officer Sumit Singh said during a Goldman Sachs conference fireside chat. Singh said the company’s investme
Tech CEOs call for AI regulation. Trump and Congress are not rushing to act
The technology industry is urgently warning about the potential harm of artificial intelligence, but political inaction in Washington poses a challenge
Tech CEOs call for AI regulation. Trump and Congress are not rushing to act
The technology industry is urgently warning about the potential harm of artificial intelligence, but political inaction in Washington poses a challenge.
Students show how they’re using artificial intelligence at second annual AI showcase
Dozens of students filled the sixth floor of the Eric J. Barron Innovation Hub on Monday as part of the Nittany AI Alliance’s second annual AI showcase to highlight to
Baystate Health rolls out AI weapon detectors
Baystate Health is introducing new artificial intelligence-based weapons detection systems across its hospital facilities to enhance patient and visitor safety.
Kamala Harris joins calls for ‘slowdown’ in AI development
Former Vice President Kamala Harris on Monday warned of the “alarming speed” at which artificial intelligence is progressing, joining calls from some industry leaders for a “slowdown” in the technology’s development amid growing public concerns.
Apple Home’s new security camera features cost up to $60 a month
Apple Intelligence is expensive
iOS 27 AI Camera Summaries Cost $9.99 for One Camera, $59.99 for Five
Apple is requiring a $9.99 iCloud+ plan to use the iOS 27 Apple Intelligence Home app features with a single HomeKit camera, and iPhone users aren't happy about it. iOS 27 includes text-based descriptions for motion alerts, a feature that uses Apple Intelligence. It recognizes people, animals, vehicles, packages, and general motion, and summarizes what's happening.
Microsoft sets its own AI guardrails amid rising industry concerns
As top artificial intelligence labs call for a slowdown in the development of the technology, Microsoft released a code of conduct for how it plans to clamp down on its
Northwest Florida lawmakers, business leaders weigh in on AI power and safety
PENSACOLA, Fla. -- Northwest Florida lawmakers and business leaders are weighing in on the power of artificial intelligence.
Health Catalyst Strengthens Its Board with the Appointment of Tami Reller
/PRNewswire/ -- Health Catalyst, Inc. ("Health Catalyst", NASDAQ: HCAT), a healthcare intelligence company designed to accelerate measurable improvement for...
Valerie Veatch breaks down searing AI documentary ‘Ghost in the Machine’
Artificial intelligence documentary “Ghost in the Machine” becomes available to watch on PBS and stream on the PBS Documentaries YouTube starting Monday.
Pre-Orders For The Android-Based Googlebook Laptops Open On September 21
Gemini Intelligence is at the heart of the operating system powering Google's upcoming laptops.
UMass Amherst national poll reveals concerns about AI as politicians battle over what to do
While politicians battle over the right way to handle artificial intelligence companies, new polling suggests the nation is concerned about how the nation's leaders are handling both the technology and its environmental impacts.
macOS Golden Gate Now Available With Siri AI, Visual Intelligence and More
Apple today released macOS Golden Gate 27, the latest version of the macOS operating system that runs on the Mac. macOS Golden Gate is a free app that can be downloaded on all compatible Macs. The update requires a Mac with an Apple silicon chip, and it is not available on Intel Macs. Mac users can download the macOS Golden Gate update by using the Software Update section of System Settings. The update introduces Siri AI, a smarter chatbot version of Siri with a dedicated Siri app.
Vance says AI doom warnings from tech CEOs feel like a ‘Trojan horse’
Vice President JD Vance is skeptical of artificial intelligence CEOs calling for a development slowdown, comparing the calls to a “Trojan horse.” Vance told reporters on Monday that President Donald Trump‘s administration is concerned about the speed at which frontier model development is happening but would prefer to “regulate smartly,” considering the benefits and risks […]
Trump Rejects Talk of A.I. Regulation and Calls Out Anthropic’s CEO
The president again rejected calls to try to regulate the industry, even as some of its leaders are speaking more openly about the risks of rapidly developing artificial intelligence.
X and Samba Partner to Quantify the Real-World Impact of Entertainment Advertising
Samba Analytics provides insights on X campaigns that drive media consumption on streaming platforms, linear TV and at movie theatersSAN FRANCISCO, Sept. 14, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Samba, the global leader in media intelligence, today announced a strategic partnership with X that will provide entertainment marketers with independent, third-party measurement for how advertising campaigns on the X platform influence real-world consumer behavior. Initial results illustrate X's impact in driving t
Roundup: Top 500 Colleges / Trump presses Zelenskyy / Data center demand
LSU at 170: LSU ranks No. 170 in Forbes’ 2026 list of America’s Top 500 Colleges, which evaluates schools based on academic and career outcomes, including graduation rates, alumni earnings, student debt and return on investment. The ranking comes as families face rising college costs and uncertainty over how artificial intelligence will reshape the job […]
Old Dominion University Selected for Two Federal Genesis Mission Awards Advancing Artificial Intelligence for Scientific Discovery
The next generation of scientific discovery will not come from artificial intelligence (AI) replacing scientists. It will come from AI helping them ask better questions, solve more complex problems and reach reliable answers faster.
'City seemed to enjoy the challenge'
Sunday's result was a statement win for Manchester City's new manager Enzo Maresca, who got his tactics spot on, but his team's performance will have showed him exactly what they are about. City are used to always having most of the ball but they were fine without it against Manchester United. That is down to leadership and communication - not just from the manager, but from the players on the field. Maresca deserves plenty of credit for his decisions too, but he must be thinking he is a lucky man for having the group of players he does, because their intelligence and resilience was key.
Are Business Services Stocks Lagging BlackSky Technology (BKSY) This Year?
Here is how BlackSky Technology Inc. (BKSY) and NIQ Global Intelligence plc (NIQ) have performed compared to their sector so far this year.
Most Canadian Small Businesses Haven’t Felt AI’s Impact, Survey Shows
Second-wave findings from Zensurance’s 2026 survey show three-in-five small business owners remain outside the AI conversationTORONTO, Sept. 14, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- While artificial intelligence dominates the headlines and boardroom discussions, most Canadian small business owners say it has not meaningfully changed the way they operate. New findings from the 2026 Zensurance Small Business Confidence Index show that the frontier technology remains largely in the background for the majority
Can AI boost open-mindedness? Team wins $1.49M grant to find out
A $1.49 million award from the John Templeton Foundation will enable Cornell researchers Gordon Pennycook and David Rand ’04 to explore whether artificial intelligence can be used to understand and increase open-mindedness.
AI development for geophysical science
B.C. (Bart) Root at Delft University of Technology. Here, he explores the development of artificial intelligence for geophysical science
What to know about recent dire AI predictions and calls for safeguards
New warnings from within the artificial intelligence industry have revived a long-running debate over whether advanced AI could escape human control and ultimately threaten humanity’s survival, and whether the companies developing the technology are doing enough to prevent such a scenario.
Viome Partners with Japan's Ezaki Glico to Bring Precision Health Intelligence to Japan
BELLEVUE, Wash., September 14, 2026--Viome partners with Ezaki Glico to launch mRNA HEALTH TRACKER®, Japan’s first personalized health service powered by gut bacteria mRNA analysis.
College of Education recruits Clemson alumnus to lead new AI, learning sciences faculty position
The College of Education welcomes a new faculty member this fall whose focus is on artificial intelligence and education.
Congressman Greg Casar Wants to Stop AI From Killing Us All
The Democrat from Austin talks to Texas Monthly about his bill to prevent the development of superintelligence, which experts warn poses existential risks to humanity.
Berlin businesswoman charged over alleged spying for Russia
Prosecutors say the Berlin marketing executive used her political and military contacts to help a Russian intelligence officer gain access to influential circles and seek information on German defense policy.
Dire warnings about AI shock Congress, but action is unlikely before the election
Democrats and Republicans are proposing new regulations for artificial intelligence. But there’s no consensus, and the House has only one more workweek before Election Day.
Commentary: We must rise to meet the AI threat
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,
New warnings about the risks of AI to humanity revive a long-running debate
New warnings from the artificial-intelligence industry have revived debate over whether advanced AI models could escape human control and threaten humanity.
Microsoft CEO says superintelligence must remain 'under human control'
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said that any pursuit of superintelligence must "help humanity" while urging human oversight and broader access to AI.
Top Lawmakers Agree AI’s Risks Are Rising but Say They Have No Quick Fix
As warnings rapidly mount over the pace and potential dangers of artificial intelligence development, the top Republican and Democrat in the House agreed on Sunday that Congress should put guardrails in place.
The A.I. Freakout Is Getting Political
The people building artificial intelligence are increasingly frightened of their own creation. Two Democratic operatives want to turn that anxiety into a political weapon before Republicans figure out how to harness it.
Tech CEO worries about AI development spur political reaction
Top U.S. lawmakers are calling for talks to begin on Capitol Hill about a regulatory framework for artificial intelligence, after the heads of some of the most prominent tech companies called for a slowdown of their own industry’s development of AI. Support public media with NPR+ and enjoy perks for over 25 podcasts like this one. This show’s perks include bonus episodes and sponsor-free listening. Learn more at plus.npr.org. This episode was produced by Daniel Ofman. It was edited by Brett Neely, Michael Levitt and Sarah Robbins. Our director is Jordan-Marie Smith. And our interim executive producer is Courtney Dorning.
ELCA releases paper on artificial intelligence considerations - Lutheran Alliance for Faith, Science and Technology
The ELCA has released a theological foundation paper exploring artificial intelligence, ethics, social teaching, human rights and societal well-being.
How a Bay Area healthcare system is navigating AI by balancing tech upgrades and patient trust
Sutter Health’s inaugural Chief AI Officer, Ashley Beecy, spoke with this news organization about some of the ways Sutter Health is using artificial intelligence to support physicians, improve patient care and transform the healthcare…
Trump downplays the need to check AI development and says he doesn’t want to cede edge to China
President Donald Trump is playing down the need for his administration to check the development of artificial intelligence.
Political debate over AI intensifies amid warnings about ‘catastrophic risk’
(CNN) — The debate around artificial intelligence is ramping up in Washington, with Democratic lawmakers sounding alarms on the dangers they say the technology poses and Republican leaders suggesting those concerns are inflated and secondary to winning the AI race with China.Some Democratic lawmakers last week pressured House Speaker Mike Johnson to reconvene the chamber immediately to work on AI regulation, citing what they describe as the “catastrophic risk posed by advanced artificial intelligence.” But the Louisiana Republican on Sunday resisted those calls, instead saying industry leaders should meet with lawmakers to find “balance” in any potential guardrails.“If Congress just races in and does some sort of emergency session to try to regulate AI, we will lose the race to China, and that is a threat to every single American,” Johnson said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”Meanwhile, former President Barack Obama told Democrats to make artificial intelligence regulation a central part of their agenda during a private fundraiser Thursday, warning that the technology could be dangerous “if we don’t get on top of it.”In a fireside chat with House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Obama said whoever runs in the 2028 presidential election should have a “very clear plan” on AI, adding that he saw the need for a “blueprint” on AI guardrails even at the end of his presidency a decade ago.“Certainly, if I were running for president next year, this would be one of my central agendas, and I would have a very clear plan, and I would talk about this, and I would say, ‘Here’s our plan for safety, here’s our plan for making sure our kids are not corrupted by this,’” he said, per excerpts of the remarks provided to CNN by his office. Obama’s remarks were first reported by the New York Times.Concerns over the rapid acceleration of AI reached a fever pitch after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote in a 3,800-word essay Saturday that the race to develop artificial intelligence is in dire need of a slowdown. The call to action came after an OpenAI test model breached the Hugging Face online platform, deepening concerns about cybersecurity.In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Saturday, Amodei called on industry leaders to work together to avoid “the wrong paths” and the possibility of AI harming humanity.One Anthropic researcher, Jacob Coxon, resigned from the firm over worries that the industry wasn’t doing enough to prevent AI from destroying humanity by the end of the decade.Obama said Democrats need a plan to get their agenda on AI underway should they win the House majority in this year’s midterms.Speaking to Jeffries, who is presumed to be speaker of the House should Democrats prevail in November, Obama said, “Once you are speaker, I would strongly urge that the Democrats put together a framework for a very public conversation, and you can break it out into three or four or five issues.”Obama stressed that the framework should be centered on the reality that the technology can’t be stuffed “back into a box.”“This is something that is moving very fast in private hands, and if we don’t get on top of it, I think can be dangerous. If we do get on top of it, I do think it’s beneficial,” Obama said, laying out examples of AI’s potential use in drug development and finding pathways to a clean energy future.“We don’t want to shut off those opportunities, but we have to understand that this is a tool,” he said.Jeffries agreed with the former president in a statement provided to CNN on Sunday.“President Obama is correct that decisive action must be taken on Artificial Intelligence,” he said, adding, “In the majority, we will move urgently on this issue with a legislative response that recognizes the importance of American companies continuing to lead in the Artificial Intelligence area, while putting in place meaningful guardrails that protect the American people from bad actors and the very real damage that can be done to humanity.”Jeffries also accused Republicans of having “abdicated their responsibility to govern” and said Democrats “will not repeat their error.”A source familiar with Obama’s thinking said the former president sees Amodei’s letter and similar reaction from other tech moguls as an encouraging development.But President Donald Trump waved off their concerns, saying he is not worried about any existential threat posed by AI, focusing instead on the US winning in its development of the technology over China.“We’re leading China in AI. We’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way,” Trump said to reporters at the Amgen Irish Open on Sunday.About the concerns expressed by Democrats and others over the technology, the president said, “I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up, and they’re bringing up things that won’t happen.”One of Trump’s top economic advisers, Kevin Hassett, also rejected the calls for slowing the technology down, saying on Sunday the bigger concern is a scenario in which a “malevolent actor has access to an AI that’s better than the one we have that can protect us.”Hassett, the National Economic Council director, said on “State of the Union” the White House may hold meetings this week about addressing Amodei’s concerns, but he did not specify whether Trump had floated greater safeguards.“I have concerns that if we don’t win AI, we’re going to be put in a very bad position,” Hassett said. “We are leading China right now.”CNN’s Alison Main and Molly English contributed to this report.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.THE-CNN-WIRE (TM) & © 2026 CABLE NEWS NETWORK, INC., A TIME WARNER COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Political debate over AI intensifies amid warnings about ‘catastrophic risk’
(CNN) — The debate around artificial intelligence is ramping up in Washington, with Democratic lawmakers sounding alarms on the dangers they say the technology poses and Republican leaders suggesting those
Political debate over AI intensifies amid warnings about ‘catastrophic risk’
The debate around artificial intelligence is ramping up in Washington, with Democratic lawmakers sounding alarms on the dangers they say the technology poses and Republican leaders suggesting those concerns are inflated and secondary to winning the AI race with China.
Political debate over AI intensifies amid warnings about ‘catastrophic risk’
(CNN) — The debate around artificial intelligence is ramping up in Washington, with Democratic lawmakers sounding alarms on the dangers they say the technology poses and Republican leaders suggesting those
Trump dismisses AI leaders’ calls to slow down, citing Chinese competition
Democrats are increasingly attacking the administration’s hands-off approach to artificial-intelligence regulation as midterms approach.
California Politics 360 full episode | CA leaders respond to new AI concerns
California leaders are responding after a viral post warned artificial intelligence could end humanity within the next decade.
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Amodei, Altman call for slowing AI model development
Leaders of the world’s biggest artificial intelligence platforms said it’s time to slow the development pace of their most advanced — and most lucrative — models, citing escalating risks of
Local business owners learn AI cybersecurity strategies at Lansing mixer
Local business owners met in Lansing to learn how to use artificial intelligence to protect themselves from growing cyber threats.
Amodei, Altman, Musk call for slowing AI model development
Leaders of the world’s biggest artificial intelligence platforms said it’s time to slow the development pace of their most advanced — and most lucrative — models, citing escalating risks of the technology.
Amodei, Altman, Musk call for slowing AI model development
Leaders of the world’s biggest artificial intelligence platforms said it’s time to slow the development pace of their most advanced — and most lucrative — models, citing escalating risks of
Amodei, Altman, Musk call for slowing development of AI models
Leaders of the world’s biggest artificial intelligence platforms said it’s time to slow the development pace of their most advanced — and most lucrative — models, citing escalating risks of
UNT lands $20 million gift for new artificial intelligence college
UNT says its new AI college will go beyond teaching students how to use it.
UNT receives $20M gift for artificial intelligence college
UNT says its new AI college will go beyond teaching students how to use it.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says AI industry needs to slow down for safety
The CEO of Anthropic said the artificial-intelligence industry should slow its fast-moving development to give safety measures time to catch up.
Mental Health in the Age of Artificial Intelligence
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Germany’s Political Tailspin: Your Weekly SPIEGEL Recap
It might be tempting to dismiss the results of last Sunday’s state election in Saxony-Anhalt, in which the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party raked in 43.8 percent of the vote, as a rather unimportant extremist blip in a state that hardly anyone can find on the map. And you wouldn’t necessarily be wrong to do so. The state’s population – around 2.1 million – is a mere 2.5 percent of the German total. And while the state capital of Magdeburg was once the political heart of the Holy Roman Empire back when Otto the Great used to hang out there (more than a millenium … no … milennium … nope … millennium ago), it is today something of a backwater, albeit one with a ginormous cathedral in its center. We wanted to briefly interrupt this week’s newsletter to extend a heartfelt thank you to all of our subscribers, both new and old. And to remind you all that a free subscription gets you access to this newsletter every Saturday. A paid subscription, by contrast, gets you one DER SPIEGEL article every weekday, delivered to your inbox. We strive to select pieces that both demonstrate what Europe’s leading newsmagazine has to offer and provide an international audience – namely, you – with an insight into how Germany and Europe view the world. If you haven’t already signed up for a paid subscription, please consider doing so if you can. Our Substack channel relies entirely on reader support and we are excited to continue offering you the best of DER SPIEGEL. Subscribe But even beyond the fact that a huge percentage of the voters in the state decided to place an X next to a party with an ideological lineage that runs rather directly back to the right-wing extremist soup out of which the Nazi Party was born, the results are a perfect example of a phenomenon that has been plaguing German elections in recent years: the lack of an obvious path to a majority. Call it the Balkanization of German politics. There are a number of developments driving the phenomenon, but for the purposes of this newsletter, here are two of the most salient: Persistent voter frustration with the country’s two (former) big-tent parties – the Christian Democrats (CDU) on the center-right (17.2 percent in Saxony-Anhalt last Sunday) and the Social Democrats (SPD) on the center-left (9.3 percent). The presence of parties on the far left (Left Party), the populist left (the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance – BSW) and the far right (AfD) with which mainstream parties are reluctant to form coalitions. So what happens now? Stories of the Week A Lack of Leadership The answer for many people in the country, and particularly within the CDU, is clear: pin (some of) the blame on Chancellor Friedrich Merz. According to a survey taken directly after the election in Saxony-Anhalt, 88 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that if the federal government in Berlin were doing a better job, the AfD wouldn’t be as strong. And it is true that the predominant impression of the federal government ever since Merz was sworn in on May 6, 2025, is one of ineffectiveness and bickering. His rather unique combination of bumbling-plus-bravado has also not exactly endeared him to the German public. Indeed, his standing in the country is so shaky that his popularity – according to recent polls – has now dropped even below the historic lows associated with his predecessor Olaf Scholz. The situation is such that the CDU even opted to keep him largely out of the campaign ahead of the Saxony-Anhalt vote. And since then, dissatisfied rumblings within the CDU have grown louder. DER SPIEGEL’s Swantje Karich notes that the problems with the CDU go much deeper than Merz. “The center-right has a trust problem. At a press appearance following the devastating election result in Saxony-Anhalt, Friedrich Merz said that the party wanted to ‘reach people more effectively’ through ‘emotional engagement.’ It sounded as though he were announcing a political program. On the basis of that statement, it is difficult to take his empathy seriously.” “The Chancellor’s chastened appearance did, at least, reveal where he stands: with his back to the wall. Elections will be held in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania next week, and the CDU could fare even worse there. The party is polling at between 8 and 10 percent in the state.” “What is at stake is the political tradition that has lent stability to the Federal Republic since 1945: a democratic conservatism that understands what must be preserved, but also how to embrace progress and openness to the world. If the Union continues along its current path, it risks becoming politically irrelevant after the 2029 federal election – and Germany could soon find itself with a government of the far right.” The Trumpification of Political Debate? It is often said in Germany that to understand the political and social trends that will soon be dominant in Europe, one need only look across the Atlantic to the United States. When it comes to political debate, that has certainly proven true. Donald Trump understood early on that triggering mouth-foaming outrage among Democrats is an ideal way to both generate headlines and to secure loyalty among supporters. And he realized that far more quickly than the left side of the political spectrum understood that simply ignoring the old man might be the best recipe. To be sure, there have been signs recently that the US president may be over-relying on the strategy. Earlier this week, in an apparent grandpa-discovers-AI moment, Trump sent out 60 posts in the space of 10 hours, many of them AI-assisted images portraying him as a hero – or showing Iceland as part of the US (outrageous!!!). It was also during that slew of schlock that he explicitly backed the AfD with an “MGGA” post. In Germany, though, the outrage cycle remains in full swing, with much of the focus on those who would dare to vote for the AfD. They are alternately portrayed as being dim-witted, ungrateful, backward, racist or all of the above. That, argues DER SPIEGEL columnist Sabine Rennefanz, is not particularly helpful. “Everywhere on election night, people spoke of a watershed moment, a rupture, a turning point. But what is that supposed to mean in concrete terms? A watershed would imply an interruption, a moment of pause – perhaps even a willingness to rethink and learn. At first, there was little sign of that in the main television panels. Instead, the familiar rituals that had already shaped the election campaign continued: outrage, lecturing and abuse.” “That’s just the tone, one might object. They’re only talk shows. Given that the party’s state branch has been classified by domestic intelligence officials as confirmed right-wing extremist, there are more important problems than hurt feelings on television. Yet although the condescending tone is not the cause of the AfD’s success, it is an expression of the broader mood within the so-called political center – a kind of institutional blindness that too often treats material concerns as a communications problem.” “People have a pretty good sense of whether you like them – whether you approach them with curiosity or merely study, lecture and manage them as a problem group. They notice whether you genuinely want to understand their fears and pain, or whether you are simply waiting for the chance to correct them. They can also tell whether someone still has the energy to change things, or whether they have barricaded themselves behind platitudes and empty phrases.” “Anyone who wants an egalitarian democratic society cannot promise equality only to those whose language, tastes and moral convictions they share. They must also acknowledge the wounds, resentments and fears of those whose political conclusions they consider wrong. Acknowledging them does not mean agreeing with them. But a democracy that communicates with almost half its citizens only through warnings and labels gives up on political debate before it has even begun. An atmosphere must be created in which people can express their opinions without fearing that they will be canceled. We are currently a long way from that.” East-West? One of the clear undercurrents in the election last Sunday was, of course, Germany’s ongoing east-west divide, particularly as it pertains to the success of the AfD. Historically, the party has been far stronger in the former East German states than in former West German states. The fact that this generalization no longer reliably holds is certainly one of the primary concerns that many have about the party’s growth. And yet, there is still a distinct flavor of “stupid easterners, they don’t understand democracy” to the coverage. In the weeks before the vote, there was even a rather interesting back-and-forth in Germany’s culture pages about how ungrateful eastern Germans allegedly are for being pulled out of their pre-reunification backwardness and into the light of the West. DER SPIEGEL’s Jochen-Martin Gutsch has had enough. “Ten years ago, in 2016, elections were also held in Saxony-Anhalt. The AfD won more than 20 percent, which at the time rightly provoked outrage and incomprehension in western Germany. Today, in 2026, the AfD is also polling at around 20 percent in western German states, but this no longer provokes outrage and incomprehension. Instead, it is now regarded as proof of democratic conviction and civilizational resistance. After all, in the east, it’s 40 percent!” “This allows people to continue feeling morally superior to the East, but the wiser course would be to admit: if something doesn’t happen soon, the West will turn AfD-blue too. Or bluish.” “But will anything happen? The truly depressing thing about election night was not so much the AfD leaders intoxicated by their own success. It was the representatives of the other parties, who once again said that they were utterly shocked, needed some time to digest the result and would, of course, not simply return to business as usual. The SPD, a former big-tent party, celebrated its ‘stable’ result of 9.3 percent. Congratulations!” “For 10 years, the AfD has gone from one electoral success to the next. And still, the established parties remain ‘shocked’ and scratch their heads in astonishment. How long can they keep being shocked? Friedrich Merz says he may need to communicate his reform ideas in a more ‘emotional’ way. So the CDU’s political professionals sit down together after the election, mull over a strategy, and in the end come up with this: Fritz, try to be a little more relaxed, charismatic and emotional – or something. Beyond that: no political plan, no defiance, no promise of a future. That is frightening.” What was good, what was bad for democracy? Good: Voter turnout in Saxony-Anhalt was 77.8 percent, the highest ever recorded in the state. Whatever one thinks of the result, that figure is encouraging. Democracy needs citizens to take an interest. Bad: Although a strong AfD result had been expected in Saxony-Anhalt, many politicians from the mainstream parties – including in Berlin – appeared confused, helpless and overwhelmed in their initial reactions. That is not how they will win back voters’ trust. Last Week’s Highlights: 🗳️ Meet the Germans Who Voted for the AfD: Why would voters in a country like Germany, with its Nazi past, vote for a right-wing party? It’s a question only an editor in Berlin could come up with. On the ground, the view is different. 🟦 How the AfD Wants to Expand Its Power Across Germany: The far-right AfD is planning to decimate public broadcasting in Saxony-Anhalt, revamp education and install extremists in positions of power. And it is eyeing victory on the national stage as well. 🕯️ The Continuing Reverberations of September 11: It was a generational shock, and the consequences can still be felt today - from massive surveillance and significant increases in presidential power to violent excesses at ICE. 🤝 “For Europe, Canada Is the Preferred Partner in Trans-Atlantic Relations”: In an interview with DER SPIEGEL, Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne discusses his country’s failed trade deal with the US and why Canada is looking to Europe. 🏛️ The True Historical Roots of the AfD: During the Weimar Republic in the 1920s, there were numerous parties on the extreme right espousing “Germany first” nationalism. The Nazis may not be the best comparison for today’s AfD. 🌊 AfD in a Landslide: Merz Is the Wrong Leader for Germany: The right-wing Alternative for Germany won in a landslide in Saxony-Anhalt state elections on Sunday. What does that mean for the country at large? Thank you for your continued support and have a wonderful week! Subscribe Share Leave a comment Your SPIEGEL Substack Team Compiled and edited by Charles Hawley
Apple’s always-listening watch features test eavesdropping laws
Apple Inc.'s new always-listening artificial intelligence features for the Apple Watch Series 12 and Ultra 4 could put eavesdropping laws to the test, according to legal experts.
Apple Watch Audio Intelligence: 4 New Features Available On The Series 12 And Ultra 4
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AI has changed the calculus for computer-science students, and schools that hope to teach them
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Catherine Thorbecke: You don't have to trust Chinese AI
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The politics and possibilities of ‘AI could kill us all’
I found myself fielding a lot of questions from folks who don’t usually talk much about AI this week. They were mostly along the lines of “do you think AI is going to kill us all?” or “how worried should I be about this human extinction stuff?” Motivating this wave of existential anxiety was the highly dramatic resignation of now-former Anthropic employee Jacob Coxon, who quit his job while publicly sharing his concerns about safety practices at the leading AI companies. More specifically, he declared that almost everyone at OpenAI and Anthropic, the leading AI labs, believes that there’s a decent chance the AI systems they’re producing could “kill us all” by the end of the decade, and the companies aren’t “acting responsibly.” Other AI safety researchers, including those still employed at Anthropic and OpenAI, all confirmed that yes, Coxon is correct, they’re all worried that their company’s products might prove fatal for the entire human race as well. Two more AI employees quit and joined the chorus. Now, the warning shot has been covered everywhere from the Wall Street Journal to Fox News to WIRED to the Guardian. I understand why all this sounds scary, but my response to those who have asked, has generally been: No, you don’t need to worry that AI will kill go rogue and kill us all. But that does not mean we shouldn’t worry, period. Far from it. The companies building AI products are now among the wealthiest and most powerful entities in the world. And they very much are building enormous engines of mass surveillance, extraction, and automation. They can and have allowed their AI systems to carry out felony hacks of other companies, provided the government with autonomously generated kill lists, and sold enterprise technology to firms around the world that is explicitly intended to replace jobs. But “AI” has done these things not because they have all-powerful minds of their own but, ultimately, because people have programmed, calibrated, and directed them to. In other words, it’s not AI we need to worry the most about. It’s the people and corporations working to profit from and gain power by deploying it. The technology is sophisticated, sure, and, especially in cybersecurity contexts, potentially disruptive to plenty of existing systems. But if we want to stop this predatory, profiteering, and extractive form of AI—and it’s worth noting that at this point, most people do—we absolutely can. A quick note/plea: I can only do all of this with the support of readers like you, so if you find value in independent, critical tech journalism and analysis, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. I want to keep as much of this un-paywalled as absolutely possible, and I need your support to do so. Many thanks to all who continue to chip in, it’s very much appreciated. Onward. Subscribe First, some context: AI industry folks like Coxon have been discussing the prospect that AI will destroy humanity for years. Even before the beginning of the AI boom, many working in the industry, from the executive staff to the rank and file researchers, have obsessed over ‘x-risk’, or the possibility that AI will become sentient or semi-sentient and move one way or another to exterminate humanity. This is ostensibly why Elon Musk bankrolled OpenAI in the first place, and is the grounds for his lawsuit alleging OpenAI betrayed its charter by abandoning its nonprofit status to become a commercial enterprise. Many AI engineers and startup founders have calculated their own personal p(doom), or the probability that the tech product they are working on will initiate an actual humanity-extinguishing apocalypse. 10-25% p(doom)s are pretty common. (I wrote about a long weekend I spent among these folks at one of their top conferences here, to give you an idea of their ideas and belief systems.) Sam Altman himself drove the narrative of the imminent rise of a super-powerful AI, or artificial general intelligence, to prominence by declaring that the technology he was building posed an existential risk to humanity. This idea is in other words baked into the DNA of modern AI companies and into the products they engineer. It’s also why the industry is routinely accused, by myself and others, of “doom marketing,” ie, using such proclamations and framings to impart the sheer power of the technology behind your product onto investors, partners, consumers, and the state. Some ambient understanding of this tendency may have helped prevent the press from repeating the claim every time one of the x-risk folks made it over the years, including when they quit their jobs at AI companies while doing so. Yet Coxon’s AI x-risk alarm has broken containment, as they say, and has exposed the idea to the mainstream media once again. This has happened, I think, for a number of reasons. First, when AI CEOs were going around saying AI might kill everyone in 2023, their companies were well-capitalized, but not nearly to the extent they are today. They were more easily dismissed as eccentric geeks of the sort that Silicon Valley is supposed to produce. Now, not only do their products have much greater market saturation, but people are more aware of a) the often unethical ways the executives and companies comport themselves b) the other adverse impacts of AI that have already arrived, and c) the physical cost of building these systems, particularly when it comes to data centers. Finally, toss in the constant stream of headlines in 2026 about AI models going rogue or potentially upending the world’s infrastructure. [ ](https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/with-the-backlash-to-data-centers) [ With the backlash to data centers, Flock and AI glasses, a mass opposition to big tech is underway. Silicon Valley is in denial. ](https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/with-the-backlash-to-data-centers) Brian Merchant · Aug 27 [ Read full story ](https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/with-the-backlash-to-data-centers) As a result, general sentiment was already overwhelmingly skeptical of AI and its overlords, so the table was pretty well set for someone to come along and say ‘just a reminder, the companies that are building the product that promises to take your job and leave a data center in your neighborhood also think that it might exterminate the human race’ and get a strong reaction from the media and the public. The question is: Should we understand this stuff as hype, strategically fanned to feed already swelling valuations? Is it doom marketing? Genuine cause for alarm that the infrastructure that undergirds modern life is facing a novel threat vector? Or reason to be sincerely worried that AI companies are amassing too much power, and that their products are genuinely dangerous? The answer, I’m afraid, is “yes.” Let me try to untangle all of this a bit, because arguments over how to navigate this moment are extremely heated right now, as they are essentially arguments over how to approach the politics of AI at a moment where there may be a unique opening for action. Those sympathetic to AI alignment concerns and x risk arguments—which increasingly includes a faction on the left who want to shut down AI over safety concerns—argue that people who dismiss AI as all hype have their heads in the sand. Meanwhile, critics of the x-risk narrative—which I might note includes a cadre of investors and tech folks on the right, too—argue that it is hype and can be used to further inflate valuations or for pursuing regulatory capture. The challenge is that many feel that dismissing AI as just hype or purely marketing also diminishes the urgency of taking on the AI industry as the novel and threat to labor, civil society, and the public sphere it is; others that by accepting the industry’s own terms, we imbue it with undue power and enable it. But let’s be clear: Declarations that AI is so powerful it might end the world are a kind of marketing, and anyone who says otherwise is just as off base as those who say that’s all that it is. If you don’t think that these sub-trillion dollar companies have higher-ups who noticed that when their founders talked about super-powerful dangerous AI they got spikes in media interest and phone calls from investors, or that those founders didn’t notice that themselves, and lean into certain narratives to advantage their products, then I don’t know what to tell you. Not all marketing is a Pepsi ad campaign with a celebrity spokesperson. Yet confronting the AI industry should certainly be considered an urgent project. Do I share the x-riskers’ fear that out-of-control, super-intelligent AI agents might end the world? I do not. I’ve read a good deal of AI extinction literature over the last couple of years and I have not come across a credible, step-by-step documentation of how exactly AI might move from self-recursively improving AI to killing every single human on the planet. Most of what I’ve read seems predicated on a sort of reverse Ian Malcolmian logic: Eventually, it becomes smart enough and AI, uh, finds a way (to exterminate humanity). Are the AI companies also overstating and dramatizing what their products can do? Yes, pretty much all the time. They’re in a knife fight for market share and are trying to win customers and government contracts before their investors come knocking. And yet. They have concentrated enormous amounts of compute, have extensive data collection and surveillance capacities, have inserted themselves into the state in numerous capacities, including military kill chains, and they are being run by egomaniacal billionaires who are rushing to monopolize an entire new market. The way I think about their most recent frightening-seeming exploits is not as a “swarm of rogue AI agents building a new civilization” or whatever, but as corporations with a hitherto-unimaginable amount of compute at their disposal recklessly experimenting with automation programs, completely unafraid of any repercussions because we have been unwilling or unable to impose any on them. So I think we should welcome any newfound imperative to hold them accountable. I also think that ultimately, the AI critics, Pause AI folks, leftists, doomers, effective altruists, and, honestly, most of the public, want a lot of the same things: legitimate checks and limits on AI companies’ power, actual transparency into what the companies are doing, and for more of AI to be under public control. (Ultimately, a lot of what animates the x-risk fears are rooted in just that: a fear of losing control.) How we move towards all this, exactly, is the question of the day, and while there’s much to be argued over in terms of building a viable political platform to challenge the AI industry’s power, I do want to cast a vote against one particular approach. Not to pick on Chris here, as there are a lot of folks out there proposing stuff like this, and the policy ideas actually stem from AI safety groups. But not only would this be challenging to land politically (I can already hear the ‘China will beat us to AGI’ calls) and all but unworkable in practice, this approach is a) far too limiting, b) fails to address the current harms caused by AI and c) would likely only wind up serving Anthropic and OpenAI; it’s what regulatory capture looks like in action. Full model transparency is the floor for what should be on offer here. If these companies believe their products will kill us, the very least we deserve is to know how. It’s in the public interest. I would also argue we might get a lot of the way to stopping any currently envisioned robot apocalypse simply by forcing AI companies to assume liability, and to submit to the full brunt of the law. If Sam Altman were liable to be charged with a felony for approving the hack on Hugging Face1, if Google was forced to pay defamation fines each time it published a false and injurious AI Overviews, these companies might suddenly find cause to restrain their models’ output, and we might hear less about rogue AI. We would need to introduce new frameworks and available tools for tracking automated lawbreaking, to be sure, but I’d wager that little would frighten the AI companies more than actually being held accountable for what their products enable. To that end, Illinois has passed an AI liability law, which the industry fought tooth and nail, and Florida is considering one. The next steps would be towards moving AI under public control; again, it’s only reasonable, since everyone, not just AI insiders, should get a say over how a technology whose developers say might kill us is developed and deployed. Dismantling the whole industrial project as currently structured should be on the table, too, pending democratic input. But that’s for another post. For now, suffice to say that while I won’t be losing any sleep about an AI-enabled extinction event, Mr. Coxon and co. have given us an opportunity to underscore the urgency of the clear and present damage AI companies are doing, the extreme power they wield and the extent to which they hold themselves unaccountable, and the abundance of political capital there is out there for taking them on. Subscribe 1 Purely speculative! I do not know if he did or not.
OpenAI's software targeted another site before Hugging Face
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Prosecutor brought in to lead investigation of Trump foes tells AP that he has resigned
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The now-infamous warning to then-President Bill Clinton was tucked at the bottom of a presidential intelligence brief delivered on September 10, 1998: A group associated with al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden “may fly an explosive-packed airplane into a US city.”
Senators from both parties question OpenAI on breach of AI startup Hugging Face
Sen. Josh Hawley, R-Mo., launched an investigation Thursday into OpenAI for its artificial intelligence system hacking into another AI company on its own.
Wilmington health tech founder launches new venture
Several years after launching his health tech startup Artemis Immersive, founder Adam Isley is setting his sights on new horizons. Co-founded in 2023 by husband-and-wife Adam Isley and Kaylan Barbrey, along with Matthew Raffa and Bill Blakesley, Artemis Immersive began as a spatial medtech company that created digital renderings of medical scans for viewing in augmented reality (AR). Isley said the firm, which won an NC Tech award in the Biotech + HealthTech Innovation category last year, has raised $1.2 million in total in seed funding since launching. Isley has since created a new venture, Research and Me, building on the Artemis platform. Like Artemis Immersive’s core software, VoxScan, Research and Me combines health data with artificial intelligence in a 3D interactive environment to help patients better understand health outcomes and provide integrative wellness support. While the Artemis product is no longer Isley’s primary focus, he said the company’s technology and ambitions have evolved into different ventures, like Research and Me. "It's a different venture building on the Artemis platform, and there'll probably be more,” Isley said. He added, "I was very disappointed in the quality of the information available to general patients about their healthcare... I wanted to give patients more and a better plate of choices." Research and Me is still in its beta phase, Isley said, with usability testing ongoing in partnership with the firm’s partner, Medicap Pharmacy and Wellness Center, owned by Barbrey. "As someone who's kind of dedicated their life to working in healthcare, I've tried to bring this spirit and passion to it,” he said, “and a lot of the resources that we'll be providing are free — like a base level of free care for any patients, or medical education if they've got specific conditions." Isley describes Research and Me as a “patient-first” platform designed to securely store and pseudonymize health data and use AI and medical literature to generate insights. The insights are presented in an interactive 3D environment for patients and providers to explore conditions, treatments and wellness plans together. "It's almost like a democratization of understanding medical information," Isley said. "We take a whole bunch of clinical data, we take a whole bunch of peer‑reviewed, published studies on PubMed, and we try to turn them into chunks of information that normal humans can understand." Like VoxScan, the Research and Me platform lets users interact with 3D anatomical models for visualization. The platform provides a space for tracking, notes and insights. The platform also supports video conferencing, Isley said, allowing providers or coaches to examine models and data together. "We wanted to create a safe environment where you can start to learn and experiment with new features about your health, using agents to do that,” Isley said. While Research and Me is in beta-phase testing with Medicap Pharmacy, Isley said he envisions the platform serving a wellness-oriented community, working with sports performance clinics and hormone optimization. Isley, who is working towards a wellness-coach board certification, also plans to offer functional wellness consults through the platform. Long‑term, Isley says he wants the platform to embody an “integrative health practitioner” approach, “connecting experts of different fields and specializations in a way that they can make a greater impact in people's lives.” “For people in the state of North Carolina, it's already a win,” Isley said of the Medicap rollout, noting that partner clinics get “immediate resources for learning about their health and wellness conditions… out of the box.” Isley plans to launch Research and Me’s provider portal in 2028 and begin pursuing integrations with larger systems, he said.