In this story for MIT Technology Review, Sara Harrison explores the field of social robotics and the growing use of robot companions as therapy for autistic and other neurodivergent kids. These playful machines show promise: Research suggests that they can help children practice social skills and offer something overworked therapists and exhausted parents can’t—a patient companion, available 24/7. But Harrison also reports on their limitations and risks. Does this approach truly work? What about all the data gathered on the child? And what happens when a robot friend suddenly stops working and “dies”? A fascinating and unsettling look at tech that has moved into the most intimate corners of a family’s home.

While Moxie found herself in more and more people’s homes, Embodied still struggled to make money. In 2024, the company announced it would cease operations. Its robots—which depended on external servers that the company could no longer pay for—would descend into a deep slumber. 

Videos of bereft children who seemed to have become deeply attached to the blue bot began to circulate online. “I don’t want her to leave,” wailed one child in a TikTok video. Desperate parents posted on TikTok, Instagram, and Reddit looking for solutions. “My autistic child is devastated and I’m pissed,” wrote one parent. “Hope Embodied gives us a couple days to say goodbye,” wrote another. 

Emergency teams remain on alert as rising water threatens low-lying neighborhoods and major roads.

The post Heavy rain triggers flood alert in twin cities, schools closed appeared first on BOL News.

This content is for members only. Visit the site and log in/register to read.

President Donald Trump on Monday warned Americans that they risk becoming “backwards and poor” unless they allow Big Tech companies to build artificial intelligence data centers in their communities.

In a social media post, the president expressed indignation that any town or city wouldn’t welcome data centers, which have drawn nationwide opposition for generating pollution and jacking up utility bills.

“The only reason that communities throughout the USA should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” Trump wrote. “If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign.”

In reality, AI data centers create very few jobs once they are completed, as most of their functions are fully automated.

Trump then said that Americans “will only have yourselves to blame” if they “kill the Golden Goose” that is AI data centers.

“China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement,” Trump wrote. “Actually, they can’t believe it is happening!”

Building AI data centers has become massively unpopular throughout the US.

A poll conducted by Embold Research and published by Heatmap Pro earlier this month shows that 75% of Americans now oppose building AI data centers in their area, including 61% registering strong opposition.

While Republicans polled in the survey were more supportive of data centers than Democrats and independent voters, it nonetheless found that opposition among Republicans outweighed support by 43 points.

Polling analyst G. Elliott Morris marveled at how politically tone deaf the president sounds when it comes to data centers, commenting that “Donald Trump is actively trying to help as many Democratic senators as possible get elected.”

Longtime GOP operative Frank Luntz similarly noted data centers’ unpopularity, citing a recent Gallup poll showing 63% of Republican voters oppose having one of the facilities built in their communities.

“We’re about to see whether President Trump can sway those voters to support them, as he’s done on many issues before,” Luntz remarked.

Democratic US Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed wasted no time tying the president’s position on data centers to his opponent, Republican Mike Rogers.

“Make no mistake—this is Mike Rogers’ position on data centers,” wrote El-Sayed. “He’s got up to $2.6 million invested in companies cashing in on the data center boom, all while Michiganders watch their utility bills soar. You can’t trust a word out of Mike’s mouth because he’s only out for himself, for Donald Trump, and for Big Tech—not Michigan.”

Faiz Shakir, a longtime adviser to US Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), observed that Trump is merely “sharing the perspective of Wall Street and Big Tech” and is showing “no interest… in grappling with the mass revolt across American communities, or to learn anything from them.”

Screenwriter David Simon, creator of the acclaimed television series The Wire, accused Trump of brazenly lying about data centers’ economic benefits.

“If data centers are a geographic benefit to communities, you can be sure they’d be siting and building them in affluent and politically connected environs,” wrote Simon. “Curiously, they’re dumped in poorer, less influential places. Go fucking figure.”

Republican Kentucky state Rep. Savannah Maddox took issue with the president disparaging communities opposed to data centers, which include many of the rural communities that voted for him in three presidential elections.

“Rural doesn’t mean ‘backwards and poor’ and development doesn’t always equate to being ‘successful and rich,’” wrote Maddox. “President Trump wouldn’t be president without the rural voters who inhabit America’s heartland. It is not wrong of us to question the sudden and wide-scale effort to convert arable land into data centers. We are not stupid for wanting to protect our rural way of life.”

This content is for members only. Visit the site and log in/register to read.

This content is for members only. Visit the site and log in/register to read.

💾

EU Reporter journalist Derya Soysal was among the members of the press given direct access to President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev in Astana after he cast his vote in Kazakhstan’s first elections to the newly established Kurultai — an opportunity that offered a rare first-hand insight into the President’s thinking on political reform, government, youth, artificial intelligence and the country’s future direction.

For a journalist covering the rapidly changing political landscape of Central Asia, there are moments when being in the room matters.

For EU Reporter journalist Derya Soysal (pictured with President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev) Kazakhstan’s historic Kurultai election provided precisely such an opportunity.

After President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev cast his vote in the country’s first election to the newly established Kurultai, Soysal was among the journalists with privileged access to the President during the press briefing that followed.

It gave EU Reporter a first-hand opportunity to hear Tokayev address some of the most important questions facing Kazakhstan as the country enters a new political chapter.

The exchanges went far beyond election day itself.

Questions ranged from the consequences of constitutional reform and the creation of the Vice Presidency to the future composition of the government, the role of younger politicians and the increasingly important place of artificial intelligence in Kazakhstan’s economic and social development.

The result was a revealing picture of how Tokayev sees the next phase of his country’s transformation.

A historic political moment

Tokayev himself described the election as a historic milestone and the beginning of a new stage in Kazakhstan’s development.

The establishment of the Kurultai forms part of a much broader restructuring of the country’s political institutions.

During the briefing, the President was questioned about what ordinary citizens should expect from the constitutional reforms, how the newly created Vice Presidency would operate and what role the Kazakhstan People’s Council would play.

Tokayev portrayed the changes as essential components of a renewed political system.

He stressed the importance of the Vice Presidency as an institution capable of supporting effective governance during difficult periods, while describing the Kazakhstan People’s Council as a mechanism intended to strengthen public participation and national cohesion.

But the President’s vision was not restricted to political architecture.

He also pointed to ambitious infrastructure and development programmes encompassing healthcare facilities, rehabilitation centres, urban modernisation and environmental projects.

The question everyone wanted answered

Among the most politically sensitive questions put to Tokayev concerned his own future.

Could he stand again for President?

Following recent constitutional developments concerning his eligibility for a future presidential election, journalists pressed Tokayev on whether he intended to seek another term.

His response was deliberately cautious.

While acknowledging that the legal possibility exists, Tokayev rejected speculation about a future campaign as premature.

Instead, he argued that Kazakhstan should be concentrating on the immediate challenges of modernisation, economic growth, social development and stability in an increasingly unpredictable international environment.

It was a response that sought to move attention away from political succession and back towards the governing agenda.

What kind of politicians does Kazakhstan need?

Soysal’s access to the presidential briefing also provided an opportunity to hear Tokayev set out his expectations of the people who will serve in the new political institutions.

Asked what qualities Kurultai deputies should possess, the President emphasised responsibility and accountability.

Members, he said, should be judged by the quality of the legislation they adopt, whether they fulfil promises made to voters and whether the programmes they pursue genuinely contribute to Kazakhstan’s development.

A recurring theme throughout the briefing was generational change.

Tokayev again argued that Kazakhstan needs younger people to play a greater role in public life.

New faces and new thinking, he suggested, will be essential if the country is to maintain momentum in the years ahead.

A new government — but not change for change’s sake

The creation of the Kurultai also has consequences for the government.

Journalists therefore questioned Tokayev about the future administration and whether Kazakhstan should expect major personnel changes.

The President praised the work of the existing government but confirmed that changes would come.

At the same time, he cautioned against replacing officials simply to create the appearance of political renewal.

For Tokayev, modernisation appears to mean continuous institutional renewal rather than political theatre: bringing in new energy and expertise where necessary while retaining effective administration.

Was the election genuinely competitive?

Another important exchange concerned political competition.

Asked whether the campaign had demonstrated genuine competition, Tokayev pointed to televised debates, public engagement and particularly strong interest among younger voters.

He characterised the electoral process as another milestone in Kazakhstan’s continuing political modernisation and said the campaign had brought new political voices and new ideas into public debate.

For an international audience, however, the question of political pluralism remains one of the key issues against which Kazakhstan’s reforms will ultimately be judged.

The significance of the new institutions will therefore depend not only upon their constitutional design, but on how independently and effectively they operate in practice.

The generation that will inherit Kazakhstan

Young people repeatedly returned to the centre of the discussion.

With a significant number of younger candidates participating in the electoral process, Tokayev was asked whether this generation could genuinely transform the country’s political system.

His answer was notable for combining optimism with a measure of realism.

He acknowledged that not every young official promoted into senior positions in recent years had been successful.

Nevertheless, Tokayev insisted that Kazakhstan must continue putting its confidence in younger generations.

For a country with a comparatively young population, he suggested, long-term success will depend heavily upon the responsibility, engagement and leadership of its youth.

Politics is also about culture

Some of the most revealing exchanges witnessed by Soysal moved beyond constitutions and elections.

Tokayev was questioned about his repeated calls for greater civic responsibility, discipline, respect and public ethics.

The President argued that national modernisation cannot be measured solely in economic growth rates or institutional reforms.

It also requires changes in behaviour and public culture.

He connected those ideas with the Taza Kazakhstan initiative, explaining that cleanliness should be understood both literally and symbolically — encompassing respect for public spaces but also ideas of dignity, moral responsibility and civic consciousness.

From smartphones to artificial intelligence

Perhaps the most forward-looking discussion concerned Kazakhstan’s digital ambitions.

Artificial intelligence has become a central part of Tokayev’s political and economic agenda.

Asked to assess progress in digitalisation, the President argued that Kazakhstan had already completed an important first stage in constructing a digital state by making electronic public services widely accessible.

Citizens can now carry out administrative tasks from home that once required lengthy bureaucratic procedures.

But Tokayev made clear that he regards this as only the beginning.

The next challenge, he said, is to move artificial intelligence and digital technology beyond conferences, presentations and policy documents and turn them into instruments that deliver practical economic benefits.

He highlighted entrepreneurs, farmers and regional communities as groups that should increasingly be able to use technology to improve productivity and generate income.

His message was strikingly simple: the smartphone should no longer be regarded merely as an entertainment device but as an instrument of economic opportunity.

The value of being in the room

For EU Reporter, Soysal’s participation in the presidential briefing provided something increasingly valuable in international reporting: direct access to the political decision-maker at the centre of the story.

Rather than interpreting Tokayev’s position through official statements alone, she was able to witness at first hand how the President responded when confronted with questions about political succession, institutional change, government performance and the expectations of Kazakhstan’s younger generation.

Soysal’s access is particularly significant at a moment when Kazakhstan is seeking to redefine both its domestic political institutions and its place internationally.

The country occupies an increasingly important strategic position between Europe and Asia, while its economic, energy and diplomatic relationships with the European Union continue to develop.

Understanding the direction Kazakhstan takes therefore matters well beyond its own borders.

A country debating what comes next

What emerged from the presidential exchange in Astana was not simply a discussion about one election.

It was a debate about what kind of Kazakhstan should emerge from the reforms now under way.

How much influence will the new institutions exercise?

Will younger politicians genuinely reshape public life?

Can artificial intelligence translate into economic opportunity outside Kazakhstan’s major cities?

And how far will political modernisation alter the relationship between the state and its citizens?

Those questions will not be answered by one election or one presidential press briefing.

But Derya Soysal’s privileged position inside that briefing gave EU Reporter readers a valuable first-hand view of how Kazakhstan’s President himself answers them.

As the first Kurultai begins its work, the importance of the election may ultimately be judged not by the symbolism of its creation, but by what Kazakhstan’s new political institutions actually deliver.

For the moment, however, one thing is clear: the country has entered a new phase, and the political conversation about what comes next has already begun.

Derya Soysal is an EU Reporter journalist covering European and international affairs. She attended President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s press briefing in Astana following his vote in Kazakhstan’s first Kurultai elections.

Bill Gates said risks associated with AI need urgent attention.

The post Bill Gates reveals tech industry’s chilling AI secret appeared first on BOL News.

Dubai International Airport, one of the world’s busiest hubs, said Wednesday it saw a sharp drop in passengers during the second quarter as the Iran war disrupted air travel.

Dubai International Airport, one of the world’s busiest hubs, said Wednesday it saw a sharp drop in passengers during the second quarter as the Iran war disrupted air travel.

A Diretoria de Gestão Ambiental e Territorial (Digat) da Fundação Nacional dos Povos Indígenas (Funai) defende a suspensão ou a anulação da licença de exploração de ouro da Belo Sun na Volta Grande do Xingu, no Pará. O órgão afirma que as comunidades indígenas ainda não tiveram os possíveis impactos da mina analisados e que faltam informações sobre pontos centrais do projeto, como o uso da água, o processamento do minério e a barragem de rejeitos.

A posição consiste em um ofício enviado em 7 de agosto pela Digat à Procuradoria Federal Especializada junto à Funai. O documento foi produzido no âmbito da tentativa de conciliação conduzida pelo Tribunal Regional Federal da 1ª Região (TRF-1), que, em fevereiro deste ano, em decisão monocrática do Desembargador Flávio Jardim, restabeleceu a licença de instalação da Belo Sun.

Para a Digat, ainda existem “informações essenciais não suficientemente esclarecidas” para avaliar os impactos da mina e garantir que os povos indígenas sejam consultados conhecendo as possíveis consequências do empreendimento. Por isso, a diretoria sustenta que a licença concedida pela Secretaria de Meio Ambiente e Sustentabilidade do Pará (Semas), sem anuência da Funai, “deve ser suspensa ou anulada” até que as pendências sejam resolvidas.

Para Diogo Cabral, advogado do Movimento Xingu Vivo para Sempre, o licenciamento não deveria ter avançado enquanto essas pendências permanecessem sem solução. Ele lembra que o projeto prevê uma barragem de rejeitos com capacidade de 35 milhões de metros cúbicos e processamento de minério com cianeto próximo ao rio Xingu. Nesse cenário, afirma, cabe à empresa demonstrar a segurança e a viabilidade socioambiental da atividade, “e não ao órgão técnico justificar sua cautela”.

O advogado também contesta a possibilidade de pendências do licenciamento serem resolvidas posteriormente por meio de condicionantes. “Deixar essas exigências para ‘condicionantes futuras’ inverte a lógica preventiva do licenciamento: permite que questões que deveriam ser resolvidas antes da autorização fiquem para depois”, afirmou o advogado.

Ausência de informações

A Funai aponta indefinições no próprio desenho do Projeto Volta Grande. Segundo a Digat, há divergências quanto à captação de água e falta uma definição consolidada da estrutura de beneficiamento, na qual o minério será processado. A licença restabelecida pela Secretaria de Meio Ambiente e Sustentabilidade do Pará (Semas) também não contempla a barragem de rejeitos nem a implantação da Cava Ouro Verde, uma das áreas previstas para a extração do ouro.

Outra questão é a relação da mina com Belo Monte. A própria Norte Energia, responsável pela hidrelétrica, já apontou incompatibilidades entre os dois empreendimentos, com riscos à qualidade e à vazão da água e aos peixes, além da possibilidade de contaminação no trecho de vazão reduzida do Xingu. A empresa chegou a pedir a reavaliação do licenciamento da mina diante do “conflito entre as atividades”.

Agora, a Funai cobra da Semas uma manifestação sobre essas preocupações e exige que a Belo Sun faça uma Avaliação de Impactos Cumulativos, considerando como os efeitos dos empreendimentos podem se somar aos dos povos indígenas da Volta Grande.

Comunidades que ficaram fora dos estudos

A Funai também identificou comunidades indígenas que não haviam sido consideradas nos estudos da Belo Sun. O levantamento foi feito após um compromisso assumido pelo órgão durante a tentativa de conciliação no TRF-1 e incluiu grupos que vivem fora de terras indígenas já demarcadas.

Ao todo, foram identificadas 20 comunidades e aldeias em diferentes situações fundiárias. Seis estão na Reserva Indígena Jericoá, ainda em processo de constituição; cinco têm reivindicações territoriais registradas na Funai; e outras nove estão fora de terras indígenas demarcadas.

Entre elas estão Sítio Kanipá, Iawá, Jericoá II, Kadj, Kaniamã, Kuraí-Bom Futuro, Comunidade do Buraco, São Francisco, Jericoá, Marapaní, Pacajaí, Ilha da Fazenda, Garimpo do Galo/Vila do Galo, Vila da Ressaca, Nova Aliança, Itatá/Yta Juruna, IIA Xipaya, Debanda, Dez Irmãos e Abelardo.

A inclusão no levantamento não significa que todas sejam consideradas afetadas pela mina. A Funai afirma que os estudos ainda precisam determinar quais impactos o projeto pode provocar nessas comunidades e, a partir disso, definir até onde se estende a área de influência do empreendimento.

A questão atinge uma reivindicação antiga de indígenas da Volta Grande que ficaram fora do processo de licenciamento por viverem em áreas ainda não formalmente reconhecidas como terras indígenas.

“Somos contra qualquer empreendimento que venha a destruir o nosso território. […] A nossa luta sempre foi pelo reconhecimento do nosso povo, porque somos indígenas e sempre vivemos aqui na Volta Grande do Xingu”, afirma Claudevan da Silva Santos, indígena Juruna e integrante do Movimento dos Indígenas Não Aldeados da Volta Grande do Xingu (MINDVGX).

Para Liana Amin Lima, professora da Universidade Federal da Grande Dourados (UFGD), a situação fundiária dessas comunidades não afasta seu direito de participar da consulta.

“A Convenção 169 da OIT não restringe os direitos à consulta prévia a povos aldeados ou a povos cujos territórios estejam reconhecidos, titulados, demarcados e/ou homologados”, afirma.

Um dos casos destacados pela Funai é o da comunidade São Francisco, do povo Juruna, localizada próxima à área prevista para a mina. O órgão cobra que a Belo Sun esclareça a possibilidade de realocação da comunidade, mencionada nos estudos do empreendimento, e avalie os impactos dessa eventual mudança.

A mudança de entendimento durante o governo Bolsonaro

A exclusão de indígenas que viviam fora de terras formalmente reconhecidas já havia sido questionada na própria Funai seis anos antes. Em julho de 2020, técnicos do órgão consideraram inapto o Estudo do Componente Indígena (ECI) apresentado pela Belo Sun e apontaram essa questão como uma das pendências que impediam o avanço do licenciamento.

A Belo Sun defendia que esses indígenas, então tratados no processo como “desaldeados”, fossem incluídos no Plano Básico Ambiental Geral, destinado ao conjunto da população atingida pelo empreendimento, e não no componente específico destinado aos povos indígenas. A equipe técnica da Funai discordou e cobrou que a empresa identificasse essas comunidades e avaliasse os impactos da mina sobre elas.

O parecer também mantinha outras pendências, entre elas a situação de Ituna-Itatá, área protegida devido à presença de indígenas isolados. A Belo Sun defendia que o território ficasse fora da área de influência do empreendimento; técnicos da Funai apontavam riscos relacionados à chegada de mais de 2 mil trabalhadores, à pressão fundiária e à aproximação dos grupos isolados.

Foi para discutir as conclusões desse parecer que representantes da Belo Sun e da JGP Consultoria, contratada pela mineradora para elaborar o estudo, foram à sede da Funai, em Brasília, em 1º de outubro de 2020.

A reunião ocorreu durante o governo Jair Bolsonaro, sob a gestão do delegado da Polícia Federal Marcelo Xavier, que presidiu a fundação entre 2019 e 2022. Em 2025, Xavier foi condenado, em primeira instância, a 10 anos de prisão por perseguir e intimidar servidores do órgão. Da decisão ainda cabe recurso.

Sua gestão à frente da Funai foi marcada pela aproximação aos interesses do agronegócio e foi classificada como ‘anti-indígena’ pela Articulação dos Povos Indígenas do Brasil (Apib), que chegou a pedir seu afastamento na Justiça. Segundo a entidade, durante sua presidência, o órgão paralisou processos de demarcação – sem novas terras indígenas homologadas entre 2019 e 2021 –, restringiu a atuação na defesa das comunidades e adotou medidas que facilitaram a certificação de propriedades privadas em áreas indígenas ainda não homologadas. 

O encontro foi conduzido por Carla Fonseca de Aquino Costa, servidora do Ibama cedida à Funai, que à época comandava a Coordenação-Geral de Licenciamento Ambiental, responsável pela análise dos impactos de empreendimentos sobre os povos indígenas. Sua gestão foi marcada por manifestações que apontavam que sua atuação, durante a gestão de Marcelo Xavier, havia sido pautada por decisões que fragilizaram a proteção aos povos indígenas e favoreceram o avanço de processos de licenciamento ambiental contestados.

Segundo a ata da reunião, a Belo Sun voltou a defender que os indígenas considerados “desaldeados” permanecessem no PBA Geral e que Ituna-Itatá ficasse fora da área de influência da mina. Ao final do encontro, a coordenação, comandada por Carla, permitiu que a empresa apresentasse esclarecimentos complementares e manteve a análise do processo em andamento.

Trinta dias depois, uma nova informação técnica alterou parte das conclusões de julho. Questões antes consideradas impeditivas deixaram de ser impeditivas para o licenciamento. O novo documento aceitou que os indígenas fora de terras regularizadas fossem tratados no PBA Geral e manteve Ituna-Itatá fora da área de influência da mina. Outras pendências poderiam ser resolvidas nas etapas seguintes, conforme os documentos obtidos pela Agência Pública.

A mudança abriu caminho para que, em 2021, a Funai considerasse atendidas as exigências relativas ao estudo indígena e à consulta realizada com os povos Juruna e Arara. Foi esse entendimento que, cinco anos depois, passou a integrar os fundamentos utilizados pelo TRF-1 para restabelecer a licença da Belo Sun.

Agora, a própria Funai volta a exigir que as comunidades fora de terras demarcadas sejam consideradas na análise dos impactos do empreendimento. O documento de agosto cita, inclusive, o parecer técnico de julho de 2020 entre as referências para a complementação dos estudos.

Para Liana Amin, limitar a análise à distância física entre a mina e Ituna-Itatá ignora justamente os impactos indiretos que motivaram a manifestação da equipe técnica da Funai.

“A invisibilização de povos isolados e dos impactos diretos e indiretos sobre esses povos e territórios é algo gravíssimo, pois ameaça o direito à existência, colocando em risco a sobrevivência física e cultural desses grupos”, afirma.

A pesquisadora ressalta que a Resolução nº 44/2020 do Conselho Nacional dos Direitos Humanos recomenda, como diretriz oficial de direitos humanos, que, confirmada a presença de povos isolados em áreas de impacto direto ou indireto, o processo de licenciamento seja suspenso e a obra seja considerada inviável.

A reportagem tentou contato com o ex-presidente da Funai, Marcelo Xavier, mas não obteve resposta. Carla Fonseca de Aquino Costa não foi localizada para comentar.

Questionado sobre a atuação da servidora, o Ibama afirmou que os atos praticados por ela durante o período em que esteve na Funai são de responsabilidade funcional da própria servidora e da Funai. O órgão acrescentou que Carla não exerce atualmente cargo ou função no Ibama e que estaria cedida à Companhia Ambiental do Estado de São Paulo (Cetesb).

A Cetesb, porém, informou que solicitou a cessão da servidora, mas que o processo administrativo para formalizá-la ainda não havia sido concluído. A Funai não se manifestou sobre a atuação de sua ex-coordenadora de licenciamento ambiental.

Artificial intelligence is becoming part of the machinery of modern markets. Banks, hedge funds and trading firms are using increasingly sophisticated models to identify opportunities, manage risk and execute trades, writes Amir Naser Hojati.

Most discussion focuses on one question: What happens when an AI model gets something wrong?

I think there is another risk.

What happens when many good models reach the same conclusion at the same time?

After roughly 15 years of trading futures, I have learned that markets often become dangerous not because one participant is wrong, but because too many become convinced of the same thing.

As traders sometimes say: when everyone moves to the same side of the boat, start watching the waterline.

Different models, same trade

Financial institutions may believe they are diversified because they use different models, vendors and strategies.

But those systems may still be learning from similar information: price history, volatility, order flow, economic data and news sentiment. They may also be optimizing toward similar goals.

Different models do not need to be identical to produce the same trade.

Several independent systems can simultaneously decide to reduce the same exposure, buy the same asset or hedge the same risk.

That creates hidden dependence.

A market can appear diversified while many supposedly independent systems are reacting to the same information in similar ways.

The real vulnerability may therefore not be one bad model, but the connection between many good ones.

Markets have seen this before

Crowded trades are nothing new.

Portfolio managers react to the same data. Traders watch the same levels. Risk desks cut exposure when volatility rises.

Technology increases the speed of those reactions. AI may also increase their consistency.

Humans disagree, hesitate or sometimes simply choose to do nothing.

Machines are less likely to disagree unless that behaviour is deliberately built into them.

If many models detect the same deterioration in risk and begin reducing exposure simultaneously, individually rational decisions can produce an irrational market outcome.

Each model may be doing exactly what it was designed to do.

The market can still become unstable.

Historical success can be dangerous

A strategy can perform well for years because market conditions remain broadly familiar.

That history creates confidence.

But markets do not owe us tomorrow because something worked yesterday.

One of the most dangerous moments is not when a model is obviously failing, but when it has accumulated enough successful history that people stop questioning its assumptions.

A calm sea can make almost any captain look skilled.

For AI-driven markets, the important question should therefore not only be:

How accurate is this model?

It should also be:

What assumptions does this model share with everyone else's?

More intelligence is not always more resilience

The usual response to model risk is to add more: more data, more parameters, another model, another control.

But resilience does not always come from adding complexity.

Sometimes it comes from removing exposure.

A system may become safer not because it predicts markets more accurately, but because it knows when conditions are unsuitable for taking risk.

That is one of the hardest lessons to translate from discretionary trading into automation.

Finding a trading signal is relatively easy.

Teaching a machine when a valid signal should be ignored is much harder.

Experienced traders know that a setup can look perfectly good and still not deserve capital. The market may be too crowded, liquidity may be changing, or correlations may be breaking down.

Sometimes the best trade is no trade.

Diversity of behaviour matters

Using several different AI models does not necessarily provide diversification if all of them react to stress in the same way.

Real diversification may require different behaviour, not just different architecture.

When should a model refuse to trade?

When should it reduce confidence?

When should it respond more slowly?

And how should it behave when the actions of other models are themselves changing the market?

That matters because financial markets are not ordinary prediction problems.

Predicting the weather does not change the weather.

Predicting a market can change the market because participants act on the prediction.

As more intelligent systems enter that feedback loop, their collective behaviour may become as important as the quality of any individual model.

The next edge may be restraint

Financial institutions will continue building faster and more powerful models.

But I suspect the next competitive advantage will not come only from making machines better at finding trades.

It will also come from making them better at recognizing when everyone else has found the same trade.

Markets have always punished excessive certainty eventually.

AI does not remove that principle. It may simply allow certainty to spread faster.

The smartest trading systems of the next decade may therefore be distinguished not only by how quickly they act, but by something harder to program:

Kknowing when not to join the crowd.

Amir Naser Hojati is a futures trader and fintech entrepreneur with around 15 years of experience in financial markets. His work focuses on algorithmic trading, automated risk management, and AI-driven trading systems.

Parliamentary elections on 23 August completed the formation of Kazakhstan’s new legislature — the Kurultai — the central element of the country’s renewed political system following constitutional reform. Seven political parties took part in the vote. Turnout stood at 74%.

The first convocation of the Kurultai has cemented the completion of the institutional transition and marked the country’s entry into a new political cycle.

Political reforms and their institutional foundations

The decisive factor enabling this far-reaching transformation of the political system has been President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s consistent course toward democratic renewal in Kazakhstan.

It was within this framework that constitutional amendments were initiated, the role of representative institutions expanded, political competition strengthened, and powers redistributed among the branches of government.

For European partners this carries particular significance: it demonstrates that the institutional overhaul was not ad hoc but systematic and phased, grounded in political will and a long-term reform strategy.

Kazakhstan in the architecture of engagement with the EU

For the European Union, Kazakhstan remains one of its key partners in Eurasia, primarily in the domains of energy, logistics, and raw materials.

The renewal of the institutional system enhances the predictability of engagement — a quality of particular importance for long-term European projects.
Energy Cooperation and Market Transformation
Energy continues to form one of the central pillars of Kazakhstan–EU relations.

Key avenues include:

• securing stable hydrocarbon supplies;
• advancing projects in hydrogen and renewable energy;
• joint initiatives on decarbonisation;
• expanding investment in green infrastructure.

Institutional stabilisation after the elections strengthens the durability of the contractual framework in the energy sector, while the new legislative structure facilitates the coordination of long-term economic initiatives.

Transport corridors and logistics

Special emphasis is placed on the development of the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, which the EU regards as a strategic alternative to traditional trade arteries.

Kazakhstan plays a pivotal role by providing:

• transit infrastructure;
• connectivity between China, Central Asia, and Europe;
• development of the Caspian region’s port system;
• integration of logistics chains.

A stable institutional environment increases the investment attractiveness of these projects.

Institutional predictability

The formation of the Kurultai creates a more transparent decision-making system, thereby reducing regulatory risks for European partners.

This is reflected in:

•growing investment activity;

• deeper intergovernmental engagement;
• more predictable long-term project planning;
• broader participation by European business.

The 23 August elections have concluded the phase of institutional renewal in Kazakhstan and opened the period of practical implementation of reforms. For the European Union, this means a more predictable foundation for cooperation with Kazakhstan in the key spheres of energy, raw materials, and transport infrastructure. Kazakhstan enters a new political cycle with an updated institutional system, reinforcing its position as a strategic partner of the EU in Eurasia.

The Central Election Commission announced preliminary results of the elections for deputies of the Kurultai of the Republic of Kazakhstan, which took place on 23 August, reports a correspondent for the Kazinform agency.

According to preliminary data, the Adilet party received 6,528,948 votes, or 71.17%. The National Social Democratic Party received 469,058 votes, or 5.11%.

The Green Party "Baytak" received 97,751 votes, or 1.07%, the People's Party of Kazakhstan - 285,395 votes, or 3.11%.

The Auyl party received 574,621 votes, or 6.26%. The Ak Zhol Democratic Party of Kazakhstan received 478,083 votes, or 5.21%, and the Respublica party received 509,631 votes, or 5.56%.

In addition, 2.51% of voters voted against all.

Earlier, Kazakhstan announced the results of exit polls on preliminary vote counts for the Kurultai elections.

More than a decade ago, a group of snipers shot up an electrical substation in Silicon Valley, striking power transformers and disabling the substation for nearly a month. The shooters were never identified; similar substation shootings, some by neo-Nazis, have taken place since. The longer Christopher Cox studies the American power grid—looking at aging infrastructure and ongoing transformer shortages, specialized manufacturing and rising demand, the massive energy consumption of data centers and whiplash usage of large language models—the more vulnerable it seems. “Somehow, we’ve made the industrial equivalent of a Fabergé egg the linchpin of our civilization,” Cox writes. “What would happen if someone started breaking them?”

The hope of restoring the grid would fade as fossil fuel supplies were exhausted, because so many utilities rely on them to “black-start” their generating units. A 2010 report called “High-Impact, Low-Frequency Event Risk to the North American Bulk Power System,” prepared by the Energy Department and NERC, condensed the entire disaster movie that would follow into a single paragraph: “The supply of food, water and fuel would degrade within days. The facile communication of information to the general population would be greatly complicated by the loss of cellphones, internet access and television. The economy would virtually shut down as electronic transactions could no longer be processed. After several days, widespread social unrest and confusion would ensue.” Thirsty, starved, dirty and surrounded by the useless machines we once depended on, we would be lucky if our misery ended at “confusion.”

President Donald Trump on Wednesday insisted that Americans should welcome artificial intelligence data centers in their communities, despite polls showing widespread opposition to their construction across the US, as well as mounting evidence of their negative impacts on the environment, public health, and Americans’ utility bills.

During a White House event with cryptocurrency and technology leaders, Trump was asked what he would say to working-class voters who backed him in the 2024 election but are skeptical about the benefits of AI.

Trump said he saw no reason why there should be opposition to building data centers, which have drawn criticism for producing pollution and forcing major spikes in utility bills thanks to their massive energy needs.

“If I were the mayor of a town or the governor of a state, and I had a chance to get a big plant in, an AI plant, or a data center, I would absolutely want it,” Trump explained. “The jobs are enormous and the money paid, the taxes paid, are enormous. And if you don’t take it, you’re going to be left behind because there are plenty of places that want it.”

The president then suggested that the only reason data centers aren’t popular is due to lack of effective propaganda from the tech industry.

“Maybe it could use a little public relations help,” he said.

Trump: "If I were the mayor of a town or the governor or a state, and I had a chance to get a big data center, I would absolutely want it" pic.twitter.com/9caqZ8L76b

— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar) August 19, 2026

An internal memo written by the National Republican Senatorial Committee that leaked to Axios on Wednesday warned Silicon Valley that data centers were massively unpopular throughout the country and were putting GOP candidates at risk.

In particular, the memo singled out the US Senate race in Ohio, where former Democratic Sen. Sherrod Brown has used incumbent Republican Sen. Jon Husted’s support for data centers as a cudgel.

“If voters’ perceptions of data centers are not fixed quickly,” the memo cautioned, “the campaign against them will expand far beyond Ohio.”

The New York Times reported on Thursday that the backlash to data centers has gotten so strong that it has inspired recall campaigns against officials who approved their construction in states including Missouri, Oklahoma, and Michigan.

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), who has proposed a nationwide moratorium on AI data center construction, told the Times that opposition to Big Tech should be a basic litmus test for any ambitious politician.

“People are standing up and saying, ‘Sorry, we don’t want these data centers in our communities for a number of reasons,’” Sanders said. “If you can’t have the guts to stand up to some large corporation, you should not continue serving in office.”

This content is for members only. Visit the site and log in/register to read.

💾

Police in cities across the U.S. are rolling out a pro-drone PR blitz as hundreds of local police departments prepare to deploy autonomous, AI-driven surveillance drones. The drones are capable of following a single vehicle across an entire city, capturing footage through apartment windows, and generally recording daily life from the sky without being noticed.

As of February, more than 1,000 law enforcement and public safety agencies had received waivers from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to operate autonomous surveillance drones as part of so-called “drone-as-first-responder” (DFR) programs, according to public records obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) and released in July. While the list of waiver recipients includes fire departments and other first responders, the vast majority are law enforcement agencies, including police in cities large and small.

The automated drone push comes as resistance to mass surveillance by license plate-reading cameras goes viral. Residents are packing city council meetings across the country to demand restrictions on the data gathered by high-tech drones and cameras — or an end to mass surveillance altogether.

Scandals over digital stalking by police and other abuses are erupting as new surveillance tech empowers the state to violate privacy in entirely fresh ways. In response, people are taking direct action, sabotaging automated license plate readers (ALPRs) that are capable of building complex profiles of individual vehicles.

Flock Safety, a top surveillance tech firm, is the company most associated with ALPRs and is itself often at the center of controversy. But Flock also has a number of competitors, including Axon and Motorola Solutions. And business across the surveillance tech economy is booming.

In many cities, local cops have extra funding for surveillance from wealthy private donors, police foundations, and federal grants; surveillance companies also often offer police free trials and help with applying for grants and waivers. Those surveillance firms have expanded from offering singular technologies such as ALPRs or body-worn cameras to become one-stop shops for police seeking the latest surveillance setup — including advanced drones.

Unlike most consumer drones, which are controlled by an operator looking up from the ground, autonomous surveillance drones used for DFR programs are operated remotely, allowing police to send drones much longer distances and stream live video footage back to headquarters. Cops in many cities have launched camera-carrying drones for years, but autonomous drones guided by AI are capable of flying “beyond the visual line of sight” of the operator (also known as BVLOS drones) and can be managed from a central launch pad, freeing up police time and capacity.

“The human increasingly is not flying the drone; the drone is driven by artificial intelligence and just deployed from one spot to another spot.”

“The human increasingly is not flying the drone; the drone is driven by artificial intelligence and just deployed from one spot to another spot,” said Beryl Lipton, the senior investigative researcher at EFF, in an interview. “They don’t have a pilot, but there is often a human person who is there to manage the feed.”

Instead of attending a street parade and launching a drone overhead, for example, police can fly multiple drones with AI-driven navigation from a desk, as EFF writes:

FAA rules for police drones also required a human operator to manually fly the device to a scene, but DFR technology has become a more common and more automated police technology. DFR programs increasingly rely on artificial intelligence to automate drone flights from launchpads placed around the city, often atop municipal buildings, and make it possible for one drone operator to “fly” multiple devices at once.

Flying a BVLOS drone requires an FAA waiver. The agency streamlined the waiver process in April 2025 and approved more waivers for BVLOS drones between then and February 2026 than it had in the previous seven years combined, EFF reports.

Lipton said most law enforcement applicants are already deploying automated drones or are strongly considering a “drone-as-first-responder” program. Once police begin a relationship with a company such as Flock Safety or Axon, Lipton said, taxpayers can expect a push for purchases of additional gadgets, upgrades, and storage for video.

It’s also not surprising that these programs now seem ubiquitous. “There is a lot of this kind of peer pressure in law enforcement, you can really see it with Flock,” Lipton said. “One police department gets a new tool or signs off on Flock cameras, and then you see neighboring cities are now signing up for Flock to keep up with the latest new thing.”

Flock Safety boasts that its automated “first responder” drones carry ALPR cameras that can read license plates from above up to 2,000 feet away, allowing police to connect surveillance footage of individual vehicles to data captured on the street. Lipton said companies such as Flock and Axon bundle services like gadgets and processing software to help police compile data from multiple streams into easily searchable databases, including footage from body-warn cameras, ALPRs, automated gunshot detectors, and drones flying overhead.

While a corporate partnership between Flock Safety and Axon fell apart in early 2025, some of the most prominent companies selling drones to police departments, including Skydio, integrate their products directly with the software and data analysis tools sold by leading manufacturers of ALPRs. “People don’t realize that video analytics has really developed as much as it has in the past few years, no matter whether coming from a police body-worn camera, drones or ALPR,” Lipton said. “All of these can easily be analyzed and made searchable, and that is a really integral part of what Axon and Flock are doing.”

Amid widespread backlash to ALPRs, police across the nation are going into PR mode, releasing footage of drones in action along with statements casting the technology as a “first responder” that can arrive on the scene before police to establish “situational awareness,” help with search-and-rescue, and track down suspects and stolen property.

“It seemed much more palatable for a drone to be framed as a ‘first responder’ … But in practice it is plain old surveillance.”

“It seemed much more palatable for a drone to be framed as a ‘first responder’ going to a specific crime rather than a tool for surveillance that has a very abstract crime-fighting purpose,” Lipton said. “But in practice it is plain old surveillance.”

Audits of drone flight logs — from piloted or autonomous drones — tell a more complicated story. In places police are required to log flights, officers often record only vague justifications for launching drones without a warrant, often for what appear to be routine dispatches and training flights, the ACLU has noted. Even on mundane missions, such drones equipped with powerful zoom lenses or infrared sensors can capture significant data that can later be analyzed with AI-powered data processing and facial recognition technology.

On July 13, Wired published an investigation into hours of drone footage from the San Franciso Police Department, providing an unfiltered look at automated drones in action. The footage was accidentally released on the open internet via the website for Skydio, the company providing the drones and software behind them. Discovered by security researchers Sam Curry and Maik Robert, the leaked footage itself raised serious privacy concerns.

“In the case of San Franscisco, they are doing a lot of locking onto license plates and, particularly, people, and the drone is able to navigate itself,” Lipton said.

The innocuous scenes captured by drones — police talking to a unhoused person, an arrest at a gas station by undercover officers, two men parking a car before joining a basketball game — also raised questions about the nature and breadth of the surveillance.

In one video, a response to an alleged “prowler” incident, the drone hovers over a young person wearing headphones and apparently having a private moment on the roof of a building. The drones have powerful zoom lenses, and footage captured of living rooms in the interior of apartments and people on private rooftops raise serious constitutional questions about the level of intrusion involved, according to Jay Stanley, a privacy analyst at the ACLU.

“It’s pretty clear that a police drone hovering, say, outside a 2nd story window in a suburban backyard would violate ‘reasonable expectations of privacy’ and thus the Constitution’s Fourth Amendment, but it’s less clear what the courts would find to be a reasonable expectation of privacy in a city, where people are already susceptible to Rear Window-type observation,” Stanley wrote in a blog post on July 17.

In some cities, police launched drone-as-first-responder programs with automated BVLOS drones with little or no oversight. The city council in Nashville, Tennessee, is considering placing restrictions on automated drones after learning that police had quietly launched a trial program without a vote or hearing by the city council. After public outcry, the Metro Nashville Police Department announced on August 6 that it would end its trial drone program.

New Orleans was among the cities that received the FAA waiver for an automated drone-as-first-responder program. Police plan to expand their existing drone program to launch drones in response to 911 calls from the historic French Quarter later this year. But residents were outraged after activists discovered that the city’s police department had changed internal rules to allow police drones to carry “weapons” with prior approval from the police superintendent, according to Edith Romero, an organizer with Eye on Surveillance. Police claimed the change was only a proposal added to a draft policy, but as Verite News pointed out, the file name for the “draft” document suggests the policy was meant to go into effect on June 21.

“Nobody knew; city council didn’t know, we had to announce it, and we mobilized people to start calling and start demanding that this be rescinded,” Romero told Truthout in an interview.

Police ditched the policy on drones carrying weapons after public outcry. On August 6, the New Orleans City Council voted to require police to publicly publish regular drone flight logs and reports on usage and reasons for deployment. While the new ordinance addresses transparency, it does not place enforceable restrictions on drone use. Romero echoed residents who submitted public comments arguing the ordinance does not go far enough.

“We need to do an investigation of the policy violations that happened last year, and the change in policy that weaponized the drones before we can move toward an expansion,” Romero said, adding that there must be penalties for police who deploy drones for unapproved uses.

The city has become a testing ground for surveillance tech, including ALPRs and cameras equipped with facial recognition. Wealthy private interests have funded an expansion of policing in the French Quarter, and the nonprofit Project NOLA secretly supplied police with data from a network of facial recognition cameras in violation of local law.

Officials said the use of facial recognition was paused after a Washington Post investigation exposed the program in May 2025, but the ACLU reported in April 2026 that abuses continue. The ongoing controversy has left residents anxious about surveillance in a city where drones are already a common sight during parades and street festivals.

“We already have people coming to us saying, ‘I saw drone outside my window, we don’t know what to do, how can we even confirm that it was a police drone?’” Romero said. “But we don’t know who was manning the drone, and for what purpose.”

According to Skydio flight logs for 2025 obtained by Eye on Surveillance and reviewed by Truthout, piloted drones were overwhelmingly dispatched to respond to calls about minor incidents, including a subject who was “involved in a disturbance with the hot dog guy then fled the scene.”

Drones were twice dispatched in response to a “Black female” causing a “disturbance” on or near Bourbon Street, famously one of the rowdiest bar crawls in the world. While many entries for “Type of Incident” in the flight logs are left blank, in multiple cases, drones responded to calls about unhoused people and people with mental illness.

“This is really why they want the [drones-as-first-responder] drones in the French Quarter,” Romero said. “These business owners don’t want to see people that are houseless, and they want to harass people they think are suspicious.”

Romero said building a surveillance state is clearly not the solution to homelessness or the budget crisis facing city leaders, who may be tempted by lucrative federal grants that require cities to build out surveillance infrastructure. Romero pointed to the Trump administration’s Model Cities Initiative, which offers $300 million to cities that invest in “proactive policing” and surveillance tech.

“If cities are building the surveillance infrastructure, the risks that our data will end up in the hands of the federal government or state government in our case are really high.”

“We have to take into consideration that the federal and the state governments are trying to use all the surveillance technologies out there. And so if cities are building the surveillance infrastructure, the risks that our data will end up in the hands of the federal government or state government in our case are really high,” Romero said.

Lipton said many questions remain about how police are actually using drones as “first responders,” and advocacy around restrictions and transparency is critical. Drones are not as immediately visible to the public as traffic cameras. But as anger continues rise over the automated license plate readers sold to police by Flock and Axon, Lipton expects a similar backlash to automated drones once more people learn about the technology.

“The adoption of these tools has outpaced the public’s awareness that they exist,” Lipton said. “License plate readers have been around for a very long time at this point, but we are seeing a moment where everybody — even people who are not tech-savvy — understand what it means that these systems are accessible in real time and interconnected.”

Following the largest nurses strike in New York City history, Marilyn Shuler and 11 of her co-workers returned to their jobs at Montefiore Hospitals in the Bronx in February, only to find that their work environment had changed in a major way. 

At the time, Shuler worked in utilization review, a department that ascertains the need for medical care and whether care is covered by insurance. The veteran nurse, who worked at Montefiore for almost 40 years, had to begin using Datavant, a tool used to abridge the process by which the hospital sends patient and care information to insurance companies. Datavant’s website refers to itself as an AI platform.

Shuler said she and other nurses thought the tool would just help process the backlog of cases created by the nurses strike. But when case volume returned to normal, the 12 nurses working in utilization review were told to continue using Datavant. 

In early July, after a few months of using the tool, Shuler was laid off from the position she held for six years. Her colleagues were all laid off too. They felt they had been replaced by artificial intelligence.

Shuler’s case and that of her colleagues, she said, is far from an outlier. Hospitals will continue to automate and eliminate the jobs of nurses and other workers through AI, Shuler added. 

Job automation keeps nurses up at night. It was a concern raised by nurses represented by the New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) earlier in the year, when 15,000 walked off the job demanding a new contract. 

“Artificial intelligence should never replace real human caring from a nurse,” NYSNA President Nancy Hagans said in a press release issued when the 12 nurses at Montefiore lost their job.  

Montefiore representatives deny having replaced workers with Datavant. 

“As is often the case, the claims by NYSNA are inaccurate and misleading,” Joe Solmonese, Montefiore’s senior vice president for government relations and strategic communications, said in an email. “What is true is that we are always investing in new technology to ensure the best care and outcomes for our patients and will continue to do so for the betterment of the people we serve.”

A spokesperson for the hospital said that Datavant’s tools are a nonclinical program that helps facilitate the paperwork process, but did not address whether the program uses AI.

Shuler said the laid-off nurses did not receive proper notice from the hospital. A union representative told the nurses on May 6, National Nurses Day, that the hospital planned to eliminate the 12 utilization review positions. 

“We just can’t believe that a machine can replace all the decades of … clinical judgment and knowledge that we have,” Shuler told Prism. 

Job automation through AI is bound to impact nurses in other parts of the country too. Joe-Ann Fergus, the executive director of the Massachusetts Nurses Association, said her union, which is engaged in a fierce contract battle with the largest hospital network in the state, is pushing back against an AI future in which hospitals deprioritize workforce development. A future in which hospitals deskill their workers, she said, could be disastrous for patients and hospitals alike.

“We have already begun to see that in places where AI has been introduced around triaging,” Fergus said. “The younger, newer clinicians, the more exposure they have to AI, and the earlier exposure they have to AI, the higher the risk of them deskilling.”

Fergus said healthcare workers should have a background education, but that they should also supplement that with real experience in the field and trial and error. Reading X-ray scans, Fergus said, is an example of a practice that is enhanced by AI tools. But workers should still be able to know what they are looking at.

“We will lose the skill of doctors being able to read those tools as well, and when the inevitable happens that the system goes down, then nobody’s going to know how to read the images,” Fergus said. 

Using an AI system that does not account for the historical inequities of the healthcare industry, Fergus said, is also a deep concern. Fergus worries that hospitals might look to save money on the AI products they contract with and end up with a service that is not attuned to serving a diverse population.

“If there’s any issues of racism, or the system is not properly programmed for the population that it’s in, then that additional programming of the AI can amplify the disparities that already exist and can actually result in injuries,” Fergus said. 

Despite hospitals onboarding AI systems as an addition to workers’ current workflows, Fergus said it is only a matter of time before hospitals look to automate jobs. She said most hospitals will likely see this as short-term savings. 

But if they don’t create more staffing to maintain and continuously train the products, “then the systems become obsolete, and they become harmful to the patients,” Fergus said.

Editorial Team:
Sahar Fatima, Lead Editor
Lara Witt, Top Editor
Stephanie Harris, Copy Editor

Economist Dean Baker (Center for Economic and Policy Research, author of Rigged and creator of the AI Bubble Monitor) joins Taya Graham and Stephen Janis to break down why the productivity data doesn’t match the hype, why Palantir’s CEO seemed to be panicking on live TV, why Bernie Sanders’ AI sovereign wealth fund idea might backfire, and what signs to watch for if this bubble bursts.

Credits:

Transcript

The following is a rushed transcript and may contain errors. It will be updated.

Taya Graham:

Hello, my name is Taya Graham and welcome to the Inequality Watch Report, a show that examines government policy and action through the lens of extreme economic inequality, the existential issue of our time. Today, we’re going to discuss a technology which we’ve been told will transform our lives, an invention that has been touted as the ultimate arbiter of our collective futures, whether we like it or not. Of course, I’m talking about artificial intelligence, but with the promise also comes doubt and questions and most of all, a lack of clarity on how we’ll impact the working people of this country. AI leaders have casually warned us that their products could eliminate 40 to 50% of white collar jobs more than the losses in the Great Depression. They’ve promised that technology will be so disruptive that even staunch capitalists have discussed providing a UBI or universal basic income for Americans who will be left out.

They’ve borrowed money at such predigious rates to fund data centers that even Wall Street is beginning to just say no. And now some of the biggest names are saying it’s not working out as planned and an America’s already historic wealth imbalance and government hamstrung by the self-interested impulses of a single man. And you have a situation that could brew a toxic stew of making the already rich even richer and leaving the rest of us even further behind amid all the societal chaos and upheaval. And are the cracks just starting to show? Just this week, one of technology’s greatest apostles made accusations that AI has become a nemesis for his business and others. And capitalists who have gladly loaned billions to build data centers throughout the country are now starting to push back at the ever increasing demand for cash. Of course, the point of this show is to examine this topic through the lens of inequality and how it affects our political and social institutions and what it means for working people.

And to do so, we are about to be joined by an economist who has been thinking and writing about this very topic with insight and clarity, Dean Baker. But first, I want to check in with my co-host, Stephen.

Stephen Janis:

Oh, hey Taya, how you doing?

Taya Graham:

Steve and Janice, it’s great to have you. Thank

Stephen Janis:

You for having me on.

Taya Graham:

Now first, can you give us a broad overview of how inequality and AI are teaming up?

Stephen Janis:

I think in a way, this is the greatest American kind of ripoff in the sense that they’ve spent about the past four or five years mining all our data, taking everything we posted online, and they’re regurgitating it back to us and want to charge us for it in some way. And so to me, I think what is most missing for me besides the promise of huge economic disruption is what the value proposition is for the American people. I mean, they took everything that we wrote and now they want to repackage it and sell it as some sort of deity that we have to worship. And so I’m a little worried, a little worried, a lot worried that we’re all going to be casualties of a great wealth concentrator, which remember, OpenAI was supposed to be a nonprofit. Now it’s a for-profit company. All these huge IPOs, I’m afraid they’re just taking everything we’ve created, sell it back to us and become even richer, and there’ll be a greater concentrate of wealth and power.

So it’s just a bit concerning to me.

Taya Graham:

Actually, Steven, when you mentioned it turning into a deity, we already have some issues with AI psychosis. Maybe we should discuss that on our next show. Yeah,

Stephen Janis:

We’re just going to be praying to the AI deity and offering 19.95 a month to it. So yeah.

Taya Graham:

Actually, that’s about right. And now I want to introduce our guest, Dean Baker. Dean Baker is the co-founder and senior economist at the Center for Economic and Policy Research. For decades, he’s written about inequality, labor markets, financial bubbles, corporate power, and economic policy. He’s also written extensively about AI and how it’ll affect everyday workers and even journalists just like us. He wrote the book Rigged: How Globalization and the Rules of the Modern Economy were structured to make the rich richer, and its newest project is the AI Bubble Monitor. Dean Baker, thank you so much for joining us.

Dean Baker:

Thanks a lot for having me on.

Taya Graham:

Well, we’re glad to have you. Yeah, absolutely. And I have the honor of doing the first question. And so my first question for you is this. Artificial intelligence has been described as the biggest technological revolution since the internet, and yet you’ve argued that the economic data simply doesn’t support a lot of the claims being made. What are people missing here?

Dean Baker:

Yeah, so I think to a very large extent, we have people who are really good at hype. People like Sam Altman, of course, Elon Musk, absolute master of hype. These are the Donald Trumps of the business world. They’re selling this stuff and they’ve been very successful. I mean, Elon Musk just had his SpaceX initial public offering, which is primarily AI. I mean, that’s their own assessment. I’m not trying to attribute things to them. If you read their registration statement, they say 90% of their expected market is in AI. So SpaceX is an AI company. So they’re looking to get rich by this. And I don’t mean necessarily because they’re going to have huge profits. They have huge stock prices. So Elon Musk became a trillionaire, not because SpaceX has enormous profits. It actually loses money hand over fist. He became a trillionaire because the stock price is ridiculously high.

So step one, is it creating inequality? Absolutely. By a stock bubble, bloated bubble. Now, in terms of what it delivers, they’re saying this, is it going to have massive impact? I’m sure it will. And the model I look to is the internet. Had massive impact. Does that mean that it’s going to lead to mass unemployment? Well, a lot of people lost their jobs to the internet. I mean, Amazon put a lot of small sellers out of retailers out of business.

Taya Graham:

Absolutely.

Dean Baker:

But you still have a lot of retailers there and everyone didn’t lose their job. I think think of AI the similar way. It will change the economy in a lot of different ways, but that doesn’t mean everyone’s going to lose their job. And if we look at the data, we look at productivity, which is what that means. If people are losing jobs, that means we’re producing more in an hour of output. They’ve actually been very weak the last three quarters. Now it’s erratic. So I’ve followed the data for a long time. So I know you could have real weak quarter and next quarter could be really weak. And then we’ll come around the second half of 226 and who knows, be 5%. Very rapid productivity growth. Could happen. But the point is we’re not seeing it. And there have been a number of economists I’ve tried to look through this very carefully and look at sector by sector, look at retail, look at healthcare, look at the different sectors of the economy.

And invariably, they find relatively modest impact of the studies I’ve seen. And I’m sure we missed some, but these are credible studies. The highest number was a half percent a year increase, half a percentage point a year increase in annual productivity growth, which matters. I mean, that’s noticeable, but that’s not massive unemployment. And one of the leading economists in the world, Darin Asamiglu, Nobel Prize winner, he had it at just seven hundredths of 1%.

Taya Graham:

Wow.

Dean Baker:

These people could all be wrong, but they’ve tried to be very careful in it and they find very modest impacts. I shouldn’t say very modest. I mean, again, a half percentage point a year. If you had that, that would be a big deal. But the internet, when we had the internet in the ’90s, the internet boom is about one and a half percentage points a year. So we’ve seen this.

Stephen Janis:

Wow. Dean, that’s kind of. But these people are hyping valuations. They’re borrowing billions and billions of dollars, I think, based on a higher rate of return. I mean, is this like a house of cards? I mean, they’re hyping this over and over again saying it’s going to be transformative. But now you’re saying the impact so far has not been. Does that put at risk all these billions of dollars they’ve thrown at this problem?

Dean Baker:

Absolutely. And this is why I’m calling it a bubble. I’m old enough, I’ve been through two really big economy moving bubbles. In the ’90s, we had the tech bubble. And I was out there saying, “This is bad news. It’s going to burst. It’s going to burst.” And it did. It burst in 2001. The S&P 500 big stock index fell 50% from peak to trough. The NASDAQ where you had most of the tech stocks, that fell 80%. And it had a huge impact on the economy. I mean, for stock investors, I go, “You should know what you’re doing. Many don’t, but you should know what you’re doing. So I can’t cry too much.” But it had a big impact on the economy. We lost jobs into the 2000 recession. We didn’t get them back till 2005. That was the longest period with our positive job growth since the Great Depression.

We had a longer one after the Great Recession. But that was a big recession from the standpoint of the labor market. Also, real wage growth just stopped. We’d been seeing good real wage growth in the late ’90s, just stopped almost instantly. So that was a really bad story. And then we had the housing bubble. Again, same story. And that town in turn was more severe. We had close to 10 million people lose their home to foreclosure. The unemployment rate peaked at near 10% in 2009.

So bubbles can have very bad consequences. So that’s why I’m very worried about this one. They’re selling this and Elon Musk undoubtedly is stuffing his pockets. And Sam Altman and the others, they’re stuffing their pockets. But no, I don’t see that these stock prices make sense. And when does the music stop? I don’t know. Both those bubbles went way longer than I expected them to. But all I could say is the sooner it bursts, the better it will be for the country.

Taya Graham:

It was really interesting that you compared the AI investment boom to the dot-com bubble. Maybe you could just go into a little bit more depth about some of the similarities that really concern you. Yeah.

Dean Baker:

Well, there are two things there. One, from the standpoint of the firms, that you started to see companies that were just pushing nonsense in essence. I’m going back to the dot-com. So it became almost a joke. And I shouldn’t say almost a joke. It was a joke. And this was in the business press. So the Wall Street Journal used to highlight the most ridiculous initial public offerings. So people were coming up with crazy public offerings and they could still raise hundreds of millions, even billions of dollars in their first issue. There was one company even that took the cake. I wish I could remember the name. They said, “We don’t know how we can make a profit.” So you work from the assumption, okay, they’re not profitable today, but they have this great plan, software, whatever it is. And two years, three years, four years, they’re going to be a next Microsoft.

That’s what people were betting on. And of course they weren’t. But you had one literally said, “We don’t even know how we’ll make a profit.” So you had a huge amount of misdirected capital. And that was, of course, a huge voice for the economy. But the standpoint of the stock market, again, I was saying we want stock investors or we think they should be knowledgeable. They aren’t. And people were spending based on their stock wealth. So you had a lot of people that were saying, “Oh, I had money in the NASDAQ and just doubled,” which it might well have. A lot of people owned stocks in the NASDAQ and over two years they would’ve doubled. So they said, “Oh, I’m going to buy a new car, get a bigger house, go on a big vacation.” Well, when those prices plummeted, that consumption stopped. So it was a very, very big hit to the economy.

And I worry very. I should add one more thing on the craziness that companies discovered that if they added dot-com to their name, their stock price would go up five or 10%. We’re seeing that today. If you add AI to your name, and someone did that, I’m trying to remember what it was. I think it was- Was it like

Stephen Janis:

Diapers.com? I think, wasn’t there like diapers.com or something or something?

Dean Baker:

Yeah. And their stock price went up five or 10%, which tells you. I mean, it’s utterly nuts. You’re the same company. It doesn’t matter whether you call yourself. Com AI or anything. You’re the same company. It shouldn’t make any sense.

Stephen Janis:

Well, now speaking of a bubble, Palantir CEO, Alex Carp, had kind of a meltdown on CNBC. Let me play a little bit of it so you can watch it. And maybe you can explain what he saw. It sounded to me like he was panicking, but it was hard to figure out what he was talking about. David, if you could play that clip and we’ll just watch it and we come back, we’ll talk about it.

Alex Carp:

Everyone who uses LLMs on the battlefield runs on top of our ontology. And our clients are just, to say they’re unhappy with the Frontier Labs is to say I’m welcome at the Berkeley faculty. It’s like there’s just a level of discomfort and loss of trust that also made it really, really –

Stephen Janis:

Okay. Unpack that. What do you mean by that?

Alex Carp:

Well, you have, okay, so when you’re using large language models, at this point, everyone technical realizes they’re like a critical resource. To make them valuable in an enterprise like battlefield context or regulated context or manufacturing, you have to have what’s called an application layer. We have this thing called ontology that now everyone’s copying, but defacto, it takes a large language model. It makes it safe and useful and precise. So safe because it doesn’t touch your unlearning data, safe because it prevents the large language model from caching your data and replicating your business. Safe because it doesn’t transfer your IP of how to fight secret data, top secret data or in a clinical context. So the general way these things were sold, and again, these people are. Sam and Dario, there’s nothing more fun than debating Dario in private. So I’m not throwing shade at them,

Taya Graham:

But

Alex Carp:

Something has gone completely wrong. And the basic view among enterprises in this country is I’m going to chill lax and waste my time with tokens. I’m going to get no value and they’re going to get my IP.

Stephen Janis:

Okay, Dean, like I said, I haven’t heard the word ontology since my religious studies class in undergraduate, but it sounds to me like there’s buyers remorse or panicking among the top people, including Mr. Carp. What’s your take on what he’s saying? Does he sound like he’s panicking?

Dean Baker:

He sounds panicking. And just to be clear, I don’t know Alex Carp, never met him. But as best I could tell, he’s an odd guy. But as best I can tell, his complaints are first and foremost that you have companies spending a lot of money on AI and you had a lot of companies that were spending literally hundreds of millions a month. And they weren’t getting anything obvious for that. So they were actually encouraging their staff, their mid-level staff. So I was mentioning, I was talking about Amazon, where they literally had a leaderboard where people were posting how much AI they were using. And I don’t know if they got a bonus or whatever it was exactly, but the more AI, the better off you were. And just like to me, Amazon’s obviously a big business in any ways very successful, at least from their vantage point of profits.

Why would you ever encourage people to use AI for the sake of using AI? And the analogy I’ve

Taya Graham:

Made is

Dean Baker:

It’s like using paper. Oh, I used five reams of paper today. And you go, okay, great. What’d you do? I mean, that’s kind of nuts, but that’s what they were literally doing. So you’ve had companies looking to cut back hugely on the AI they use because they want to see that they’re actually getting something for it. And in many cases, their conclusion was that they weren’t. The other part of the story that he’s raising, Carp is raising, is they’re worried. They don’t know what’s happening with their data. So when you’re running your programs through Anthropic, through OpenAI and whoever else, they have your data. So using the example of Amazon, that data’s worth a huge amount. We know, we complain about that. Amazon, they know everything we’ve purchased, what we’ve looked at. They have an enormous amount of data on us. That’s a lot of money to them.

They don’t want to give that away for nothing to Anthropic, to OpenAI, whoever. And they don’t know whether they are or they aren’t. So that’s what he was talking about. He’s saying you need software that regulates the usage. And as it is, a lot of companies don’t have that. Again, I’m not going to advertise for your software. I have no idea what it does, but you probably don’t want to give these AI companies all your data.

Taya Graham:

Actually, Steven and I go and cover Capitol Hill, and we saw Senator Bernie Sanders arguing that if AI creates extraordinary wealth, then the public deserves a share of that wealth. And he announced an AI sovereign wealth fund proposal. And I think he’s talking about a 50% stake for Americans. Now at first glance, this sounds like a progressive idea, but I read your article. Why do you disagree?

Dean Baker:

Yeah, I’m a big Bernie Sanders fan, known him for years. I have enormous respect for him, but I really think this goes down the wrong path. To start with, just from the word go, if you’re giving the US government a large stake in the AI companies, you’re giving Donald Trump a large stake in AI companies. I know that’s not Bernie’s intention, but look at what the Supreme Court has been saying. I’ll guarantee you, this isn’t even a debatable point given the recent Supreme Court rulings. If we get the ability through an ownership stake to put people in top positions in Anthropic and OpenAI, whoever else we might buy a stake in or take a stake in, Donald Trump is going to pick those people. It doesn’t matter how they wrote in the law. That’s what the Supreme Court has said. The unitary executive, he decides, I can’t imagine in the current environment wanting to give more power to Donald Trump.

In general, I’m not sure I want the government to have a 50% stake, but certainly not Donald Trump. So that to my mind’s a no-brainer. Secondly, from the standpoint of regulation, we know there’s all sorts of ways we need to regulate AI. It’s not an option. They want to build data centers everywhere. Do you want a data center in your backyard? Should we be able to tear down Grand Canyon to put a data? That’s their dream. That’s what they want to do. We already are having massive battles on this. I don’t trust that with the government having a direct stake that we would get the right outcomes. I don’t trust we’d get the right outcomes anyhow. But I think we really tilt the playing field and just the environmental issues, that’s just one of them. When you’re talking about ownership of data, access to privacy, there’s a whole range of issues that come up with AI that are unavoidable.

I mean, it’s not a question, oh, we should leave it to the market. There is no market. We’re setting the rules. So I worry very much about that. The third point is just what I was saying before. A huge amount of this is hype. And unfortunately, I think Bernie’s feeding the hype. Oh, they’re going to have massive wealth. I don’t see that. I think there’ll be big profitable companies here, just like going back to the ’90s. You look at the providers of internet, Cisco and Verizon and Comcast, they’re big companies. They’re profitable. They aren’t earth shaking. They aren’t the biggest companies in the world. So why are we contributing to the hype? I don’t think that’s a productive thing to do.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. Yeah, go ahead, Ed. No, go ahead.

Taya Graham:

I was going to say, when I was reading your article on your substack, Dean Baker, that your first objection wasn’t really economic, that was more political. And I was just wondering why you think having a government-owned AI investment fund would be particularly dangerous under the Trump administration? Or could you just not trust any administration with it?

Dean Baker:

I’d have problems with any administration, but let’s just focus on Donald Trump. Donald Trump has made it clear. He sees the government as his tool to enrich himself, to enrich his friends. So he will put his friends in top positions there. He will have his friends, people contribute to his campaign or give him kickbacks. They will be the ones that get contracts from these companies. He’s anti – DEI. Well, women in top positions, forget it. Blacks in top positions, forget it. He’s applied that through government as much as he could. You’re just giving them a whole new area to apply this in. And again, if AI, I don’t think it’ll be the massive thing, at least these companies will be the massive things that they’re hyping. But again, I don’t want to give Donald Trump yet more power.

Stephen Janis:

Wow. Well, listen, to your idea of Bubble Watch, which I think is kind of fascinating, well, also terrifying. So for example, in the private credit markets, people started to panic and private credit is lending a lot of money for these data centers. Last week, IBM lost 20.% of its value in one day because people were panicking about software. Where do you see this starting to unravel? I mean, we’re not economists, but we’re people that read. What should we be looking at? What should anyone be looking at actually to see where this bubble’s going to start to unravel if indeed it does?

Dean Baker:

Okay. Well, let me be as honest I can be on this. I didn’t know until this date, I can’t tell you what caused the collapse of the stock bubble or for that matter, the housing bubble. I mean, I could all point to all sorts of vulnerabilities, but when they collapsed and why? Both went on much longer than I ever thought they would. I’ll say that. So I’m saying that now what I have been looking to and will continue to look to is increasingly the companies, and these are big companies, these are Meta, Alphabet, the biggest companies in the world. They’re having to borrow. So even though they’re very profitable, they’re undertaking such massive investments that they’re having to borrow. And you’re seeing a very interesting story here that investors in bonds are starting to get worried. We actually saw this with SpaceX. It was really striking.

One of my AI bubble monitors was about this, that SpaceX bonds are being sold at a discount, meaning that bond buyers see a risk that it actually could default, that they might actually go bankrupt. So here on the one hand, you have stock investors going, “Oh, SpaceX is going to be the most profitable company in the history of the world.” You have bond investors going, “It might go bankrupt. It might not be able to pay its bills.” So I would look at the bond market and it seems to be. I recently saw some data showing that there’s much less interest in Alphabet, Meta, the hyperscalers are called, that are involved in building the data centers for AI. There’s much less interest in their bonds than for other investment grade debt. And that’s who I’d look to first, because if it ends up being the case that you can’t get the bond issues to finance it, then it’s going to fall apart.

We may be seeing the beginnings of that. I mean, it’s a little early, but we may be seeing the beginnings of that. So if they start to cut back their lending, this thing could collapse fairly quickly.

Taya Graham:

If we can, I just would like to pivot for a moment to affordability. I’m pretty sure I’m not the only one out there seeing their gas, their car insurance, their groceries going through the roof. There are so many Americans that are struggling with housing costs and healthcare costs and groceries and childcare and utility bills. And I was just wondering how much of today’s affordability crisis has to do with AI, will be impacted by AI, and how much stems from our much broader economic policy?

Dean Baker:

I would say most of it is broader economic problems, but I will say one that I can pin on AI, and that’s a housing market, particularly in areas like the Bay Area. So you actually saw this when you had the SpaceX, their initial public offering, you suddenly had all these people that were doing well, obviously, were highly paid engineers in positions at SpaceX, but they’re maybe getting hundreds of thousands a year. Maybe some are getting low millions. They suddenly have 10, 20, 30 million because there’s SpaceX stock, and that’s what the evaluation would be. They suddenly turn around and go, “Oh, I want a really big house.” Well, there’s only so many really big, really nice houses in the Bay Area. So those go through the roof. And there is a trickle down here. Trickle down not in a good way. So if you’re a lawyer, you’re doing well, you make three or 400,000 a year.

Well, suddenly the home that you were looking to buy, which would’ve been a million you might have been able to afford, now it’s two or three or four million. So you look at a middle-class house and you’re suddenly prepared to pay one and a half million for that. So then the person who’s a teacher or a firefighter that maybe, maybe, maybe could have scraped together enough to buy that for five or 600,000,

No way on earth they could pay one and a half million for that. So there is a direct impact on housing, not necessarily nationwide. I don’t know how much it affects things in Ames, Iowa, but certainly in tech centers like in the Bay Area, like Seattle, other places where there are likely a lot of people involved in the AI economy.

Stephen Janis:

Dean, when the Great Recession hit, even though it was caused by bankers’ greed, a lot of it really the working class suffered. Do you think AI could have the same impact if it does start to collapse, that it will hurt working people and that the bankers will catch a cold and will catch the flu or whatever? Do you see it trickling down again to people who had nothing to do with this, what I would call a mess at this point?

Dean Baker:

Yeah, because that’s the problem with bubbles when they start driving the economy, because our economy does not turn well. So what happened in the ’90s, we were being driven by the tech bubble. Tech bubble collapses. Nothing else to come in its place. In fact, what came in its place, it took a couple years to do it, a few years to do it, the housing bubble. And then that collapsed and well, that took a long time to recover from it. We really didn’t get back to a strong labor market, lower levels unemployment till 2016, 2017. So what I worry is that the AI bubble’s definitely driving the economy, both through investment in AI stuff, AI related stuff, and then also the consumption effect that people go, “Oh wow, I now have five million in the stock market,” which some of these people do. And then they go out and spend a lot of money, housing being one thing, they get cars.

So those stocks go through the floor. Suddenly nothing’s driving the economy and we start to see the unemployment rate rise. Wages don’t keep pace with prices. It’s a bad picture.

Taya Graham:

I actually just went to a doctor’s appointment to go to radiology, just getting exams, and they said to me, “Oh, would you like to get the AI version of this and pay an extra $40?” And I said, “Well, how’s it different than my normal exam?” And they said, “Well, actually, technology is pretty much the same.” So I’m wondering how much are they overselling how beneficial this technology actually is and how much of it is just pure hype?

Dean Baker:

They’re hugely overselling it. Again, I’m not down on the ground in all these businesses, but you hear accounts of this. So you have a lot of companies where software coding, where it’s probably at the biggest impact, where they do AI and it’s often very useful, but the problem is it makes mistakes. So you still need someone who really knows the coding to check it. And I think that’s a good story really everywhere. You could use the AI, it could be very helpful, but you still have to check it. I know my own usage, which is very limited. I had it do a reference section for me. I was writing a paper and I was going, I can type up. I’m sure there’s software that could do it too, but I was going, okay, if I type it up, it’s going to take me two or three hours and I’ll make mistakes because I’m a sloppy typist.

So I’ll have AI do it and did it for me in, I don’t know, 20 seconds or something. I still had to review it because it had some references that were improper, but it was certainly much, much faster than if I had to type it myself. So I think there’s going to be a learning process. We will be able to use AI, use it beneficially, and there will be a productivity gain, but nothing like what they’re telling us.

Stephen Janis:

Dean, why do, in your estimation, we’ve heard all the incredible stories about tax incentives for data centers. If these companies are going to be so profitable and so amazing and going to create all this value, why do they need whopping tax incentives to build out these data centers? I just don’t get it. I don’t understand. And I’m not asking you to explain for them, but what do you think is the operative motive here of having all these tax breaks?

Dean Baker:

Well, there’s a crude joke with the punchline I could use because they can.

But there is a logic that from the standpoint of a state or county, they’re saying, look, we have people lined up that want our data center and we’re taking bids from all of them. So you have to beat the others. And from the standpoint of the county or state, they’re going, “Well, this will create some number of jobs.” They lie about the number. And it’ll create some amount of tax revenue. And they might go, “Well, we’re better off even giving them an incentive. Give them 50 million off on their taxes.” And you can’t say that’s necessarily wrong because in some cases it probably is right. In many cases it will be wrong. And certainly if they end up going under, it almost certainly will be wrong because having a big data center sitting there that does nothing is not going to make your county or state more attractive for people to live in or for other businesses to come and invest in.

Taya Graham:

We’ve talked about a wealth fund and even a UBI. What do policymakers need to do to protect workers and make sure that if this actually really makes generational wealth, that working people can benefit? Or maybe I should just say, if you have a magic wand and you could design your own AI policy, what would you want it to look like? Or what do you want policymakers to do?

Dean Baker:

Well, I’d go into the old bag of tricks and just start using them and ramping them up. So one of the things we used to do shorten the work week. We haven’t done that. We had the Fair Labor Cancan Act 1937. It’s almost a hundred years now. We’re getting close. So we thought 40 hours was right then. How about making it 36, 32? That would be a great thing to do. Raising minimum wage, make it easier for workers to organize. We have it so stacked against workers organizing unions now it’s become near impossible because employers could. It’s illegal to fire people, but what’s the sanction? What’s the punishment? So someone’s organizing a union. Elon Musk says you’re out the door. You could file a National Labor Relations Board complaint. Good luck. Maybe they’ll rule for you two years later, you’ll get your job back.

Kind of moot at that point. So we have a basket of things. Also, again, finishing the welfare state. Every other country in the world has universal healthcare. We should have universal Medicare. So those are some good steps. Again, I’m not opposed to UBI, but I just think back to under President Biden, he wanted to have the expanded child tax card. He put it in as a pandemic measure. He wanted to extend it and he couldn’t get that. He had Democrats opposing him. So the idea, this is children. We’re talking about a relatively small sum of money for children. He couldn’t get that through. So can we get a UBI through? Yeah, maybe, but that looks like a real uphill battle for me. I’d rather stick to the old favorites that we know work. And there’s a Well, lot of political support for them.

Taya Graham:

Okay, Steven. Well, obviously I’m in the wrong line of work because it turns out that you can lose millions or even billions of dollars and somehow make money. Is this dystopian enough for you? I mean, what are your thoughts here? I’m obviously in the wrong line of work. Well,

Stephen Janis:

Like I was kind of alluding to before, I feel like we’re kind of participating in new theology. The value here is purely theocratic, that there’s some divine power that is being burked in a lab that we’re going to have to pay penance to, whether or not it makes our lives better or not, and whether it has any influence on anything we do. So I was really glad to hear Dean kind of cut through all that BS and give us sort of a pragmatic view of what’s actually going on. And one thing, I don’t want to refer to the Tower of Babel, but that was an awfully tall tower of cards. And when AI comes bursting down on all top of us, I think it’s going to be quite cataclysmic. So yeah, apocalyptic is probably in line there.

Taya Graham:

That’s a great point. I mean, everyone is so excited. They’re hoping for artificial general intelligence where they’re going to be curing cancer and saving the world. Which would be great. And all I just do is see people losing jobs.

Stephen Janis:

Yeah. I’m waiting for the cure for cancer. I

Taya Graham:

Would be so happy to see it. I would be so happy to have AI genuinely help people. Not just help students cheat on their home.

Stephen Janis:

Or not just create 100,000 songs on Spotify every day. I think it would be more useful for humanity. Just my opinion.

Taya Graham:

Steven, you know me, as always, whether it’s on our show, the Police Accountability Report or our coverage on Capitol Hill, my concern is the working people of this country. And just like with all the other tech upheavals, the elite who taught them, forget those who are going to be impacted by them. And this particular iteration could really be devastating. And that’s why we have to remain vigilant. If AI actually lives up to the hype, the concentrated power it would confer would be absolutely death to a democracy. I mean, that much wealth in so few hands is simply unsustainable. I mean, it will literally adulterate the process of governance with self-interest, and it’s going to warp accountability around the curvature of a technology that seems more and more singular in its appetite for resources. And I do mean a literal appetite for land and water. And that is why we’ll continue to report on it and have discussions with innovative thinkers like Dean Baker.

And that’s why we will continue to report to you from the nation’s capital, asking questions about how the government by and for the people will actually protect them from the ravages of AI Avaris. And that’s why independent journalists like Steven and I will continue to investigate and try to comprehend and share with you the truth because that’s all we have in the end, for better or worse. Thank you for joining us for our inequality watch report. And as always, we’re reporting for you.

💾