I quit OpenAI because its culture is broken — the time for trial and error is over

I quit OpenAI because its culture is broken — the time for trial and error is over

David Robinson writes: What I’m about to tell you has, I realize, become something of a cliché: I resigned this week from OpenAI. I led the writing of the safety reports we published with each major launch. Now I’m joining a parade of former colleagues—at OpenAI and the industry’s other leaders—who have decided that the current path is unacceptable. I agree with other recently departed staff that the companies building this technology aren’t being nearly careful enough. But I believe…

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Are the AI hyperscalers engaged in the ‘largest misallocation of capital in history’?

Are the AI hyperscalers engaged in the ‘largest misallocation of capital in history’?

David Rotman writes: When Jessica Wachter, a finance professor at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, wanted to assess AI’s impact on the economy over the next few years, she faced a long list of business and technical uncertainties. So she started with what she calls a “remarkable fact” that is not in question: A handful of so-called hyperscalers are investing huge amounts of money to build AI data centers. Instead of trying to predict how useful and widely deployed…

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Zohran Mamdani is elevating politics by filling potholes

Zohran Mamdani is elevating politics by filling potholes

Lydia Polgreen writes: A few days before the leaders of the world streamed into the cavernous, marble-lined General Assembly Hall to deliver their speeches on the grave crises convulsing our combustible world, Mayor Zohran Mamdani offered his own, somewhat surprising solution to the problem of rising authoritarianism: filling potholes. “If politics cannot deliver on the block where you live, why would you trust it to deliver anywhere?” Mamdani asked a gathering of mayors from big cities across the world, explaining…

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Trump demanded that taxpayer money be used for TV ads praising him

Trump demanded that taxpayer money be used for TV ads praising him

The New York Times reports: President Trump personally instructed his budget director to use taxpayer money for TV ads praising him and his presidency, setting in motion a $20 million contract that used funds from the Department of Homeland Security, according to people familiar with the matter. The ads have run across cable and network television — on Fox News, CNN and MS Now, with football games on Fox and with national newscasts on CBS, ABC and NBC, including “Meet…

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We live in a rape-prone society. The horrific Cornell case reveals what that looks like

We live in a rape-prone society. The horrific Cornell case reveals what that looks like

Rebecca Solnit writes: Sometimes a story is so so appalling, it captures the public’s attention, including the attention of people who don’t focus on the issue otherwise. Such is the case with the alleged 2024 gang rape at Cornell University. For feminists who focus on violence against women or anyone who has ever cared about campus rape, the claims made in Jane Doe’s civil lawsuit against the alleged perpetrators may be unusual in its severity – but we know the…

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Economic strain is pitting China’s people against each other

Economic strain is pitting China’s people against each other

From Beijing, Helen Gao writes: For years, the mood in China has been darkening. A weakening economy has left many disillusioned, a state of mind expressed privately and across the heavily controlled internet in lowered expectations and quiet anxiety. Some of that may now be surfacing in more troubling ways. In March, a man drove a heavy construction vehicle through an outdoor market in a Beijing suburb, reportedly killing several people. In June, a small aircraft crashed into a prominent…

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‘The toll is huge’: El Niño-driven wildfires overwhelm Indonesia’s orangutan population

‘The toll is huge’: El Niño-driven wildfires overwhelm Indonesia’s orangutan population

The Guardian reports: The mother’s hands were peeling from walking on the torched ground. Her eight-month-old baby, which clung to her side, was dehydrated and thin. The pair, named Mama Abu and Abu (“ash” in Indonesian), were found in an oil palm subsidiary estate, rescuers say. The orangutan pair were saved last month from wildfires that are devouring Indonesia’s forests and peatland, unleashing thick smog, and destroying the habitat of some of the planet’s most vulnerable species. Primate specialists from…

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ICE has been dumping protester photos into a Palantir database

ICE has been dumping protester photos into a Palantir database

Wired reports: An explosive and newly partially unsealed court filing alleges that the US Department of Homeland Security built up dossiers on ICE observers—including their photos, license plate numbers, and other information—and stored them in a system called the Investigative Case Management database, which was built by Palantir. Palantir did not immediately respond to requests for comment. A spokesperson for DHS calls the case “meritless” and says that “the underlying lawsuit is based on the lie that there is a…

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Amazon’s $1 billion plan to combat data center backlash draws more backlash

Amazon’s $1 billion plan to combat data center backlash draws more backlash

Ars Technica reports: On Friday, Amazon committed to donating more than $1 billion over the next five years to communities neighboring data centers. In a press release, Amazon Web Services’ CEO Matt Garman said that communities would decide how to prioritize funds across “education, job training, energy affordability, water, and energy preservation, and local priorities.” Laying out other community commitments, Amazon also promised to ensure data centers wouldn’t increase power bills or wipe out local water supplies. Regarding the latter,…

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Palantir AI is making a mess of nurses’ schedules. They say it’s a safety issue

Palantir AI is making a mess of nurses’ schedules. They say it’s a safety issue

Wired reports: Over the past four months, Amber Retzloff, a critical care nurse in Florida, requested to work 50 specific 12-hour shifts. But over half the time, she says her hospital’s Palantir-powered scheduling software assigned her to different shifts, often putting her on back-to-back-to-back days and leaving her mentally drained. Retzloff doesn’t expect to always get the slots she wants, but by her count the tool does a far worse job honoring her preferences than managers did when they assigned…

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Is there anything FBI Director Kash Patel won’t do for Trump before the midterms?

Is there anything FBI Director Kash Patel won’t do for Trump before the midterms?

Sarah Fitzpatrick writes: Earlier this year, FBI Director Kash Patel vowed before God, Fox Nation, and Donald Trump that he would punish the “deep state” for its manifold transgressions, especially the (actually nonexistent) conspiracy to steal the 2020 election. “I’ve been with the president nearly since day one on this,” he said in an interview with Maria Bartiromo. “I can announce on your show that we’ve got all the information we need. We’re working with our prosecutors at the Department…

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Why ‘NAZA’ terrifies Israel’s liberal elite

Why ‘NAZA’ terrifies Israel’s liberal elite

Sebastian Ben Daniel (John Brown) writes: For decades, the liberal camp in Israel has cultivated a convenient and effective defense mechanism. When faced with uncomfortable moral questions about Israel’s actions, responsibility could usually be assigned to the political fringes. The culprits were always the “bad apples”: hilltop youth, far-right ministers, a rogue infantry unit, settlers nobody in north Tel Aviv would invite to dinner. This division of labor was remarkably convenient. The right committed the crimes; the liberals supplied the…

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National Science Foundation diverted $1.4 billion in funds mandated by Congress

National Science Foundation diverted $1.4 billion in funds mandated by Congress

The New York Times reports: The National Science Foundation, one of the biggest sources of federal research funding, withheld $1.4 billion that Congress had intended for research over the course of the past year, according to internal data reviewed by The New York Times. The extraordinary move — holding back about one-fifth of the N.S.F.’s primary research budget — is the latest sign of how the Trump administration is finding creative ways to work around Congress. Lawmakers from both parties…

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‘Explosion of melt rates’: 20% of Swiss glaciers lost in five years

‘Explosion of melt rates’: 20% of Swiss glaciers lost in five years

The Guardian reports: Switzerland has lost almost one-fifth of its ice in just five years, research has found, in a dramatic reshaping of the Alpine country whose big white glaciers have been reduced to moonlike rock deserts, scientists say. Swiss glaciers shrank by 5.5% in the first eight months of 2026, according to an annual monitoring report, after a summer of scorching heatwaves that followed a winter with little snow. The reduction in ice volume falls just shy of the…

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