Browsed by
Category: Politics

Sharp rise in incidents of AI escaping users’ control, research finds

Sharp rise in incidents of AI escaping users’ control, research finds

The Guardian reports: Incidents of AIs escaping users’ control to lie, ignore instructions and pursue goals in harmful ways have hit a new high, according to research that also suggests the severity of deception and misalignment is worsening. Analysis of real-world loss of control incidents involving AI models flagged by businesses and individuals almost doubled in July compared with June, with more than 300 cases in the month, according to the Loss of Control Observatory, which monitors reports made by…

Read More Read More

X tries to shift some blame for data center backlash onto Chinese bots

X tries to shift some blame for data center backlash onto Chinese bots

Axios reports: Roughly 200 accounts from a suspected Chinese bot farm have quietly tried to influence Americans to oppose AI data centers on social media, X said Thursday night. Why it matters: The U.S. and China are racing to build the world’s most advanced AI systems — and it appears Chinese propaganda has infiltrated American circles with the hope of slowing the U.S. down. Driving the news: The X Safety team probed suspected Chinese accounts involved in influence operations and identified 200,000 accounts, including 200 accounts “posting in…

Read More Read More

Trump says U.S. has entered deal with Venezuela to take control of 65 billion barrels of oil reserves

Trump says U.S. has entered deal with Venezuela to take control of 65 billion barrels of oil reserves

The Associated Press reports: President Donald Trump said Friday that his administration has entered a sweeping agreement with Venezuela that, if realized, could give the U.S. access to vast amounts of the South American country’s untapped oil reserves, at cost. Trump in a social media post announcing the agreement said it was negotiated by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Venezuela’s acting President Delcy Rodríguez. “The United States of America has just entered into an Agreement…

Read More Read More

Trump cannot deport students for criticizing Israel, judge rules

Trump cannot deport students for criticizing Israel, judge rules

The Associated Press reports: Citing the importance of the First Amendment, a federal judge in California says the U.S. government is unconstitutionally silencing critics of Israel’s war in Gaza and others as part of the Trump administration ‘s quest to deport noncitizens who it says disrupted college campuses while expressing their views. Judge Noël Wise, in a ruling Friday, delivered a victory for The Stanford Daily, the student newspaper at Stanford University, which has said some international students were afraid…

Read More Read More

Trump’s DHS is using an obscure customs law to secretly snoop on journalists, non-profits and unions: ‘It’s outrageous’

Trump’s DHS is using an obscure customs law to secretly snoop on journalists, non-profits and unions: ‘It’s outrageous’

The Guardian reports: The Trump administration has been deploying an obscure legal maneuver to try to obtain private information on journalists, non-profits and unions, raising alarm over a power the government has asserted without judicial oversight. In one instance, the government obtained six months of telephone records for Georgia Fort, a Minneapolis journalist. Fort was not notified of the request for her information, nor was she given a chance to contest the government’s effort to obtain them, her lawyers said…

Read More Read More

The revival of eugenics

The revival of eugenics

Dan Falk writes: The pseudoscience of eugenics, founded on the mistaken notion that nature envisions some “right” combination of genes, and that selective breeding can improve the human race, is making a comeback. While the heyday of eugenics was a century ago, the idea was never really forgotten. In the 19th century, the modern science of biology was in its infancy, but took a leap forward with the work of pioneering researchers like Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. But…

Read More Read More

The AI backlash: People are irreplaceable

The AI backlash: People are irreplaceable

Matteo Wong writes: If there’s one thing America seems to agree on, it’s AI. Some three-quarters of Americans oppose a data center being built in their area, three-quarters of Americans think AI will hurt their job security, nearly 70 percent think the technology is advancing too quickly—the polls go on. Progressive and Republican candidates alike are bashing the tech industry to win primary elections. States and cities are halting plans for data-center development. Yet in cloistered San Francisco, where I…

Read More Read More

Prominent Texas Republican predicts GOP losses over data centers

Prominent Texas Republican predicts GOP losses over data centers

The Washington Post reports: Texas’s outgoing agriculture commissioner is warning fellow GOP leaders that if they don’t take action soon against data centers, they could lose key races in November. “I’ve been leading the charge against these data centers for a year or more, and it’s all falling on deaf ears,” Miller, who lost his primary election, told The Washington Post on Friday. “It’s going to hurt us in the midterms. I think we could lose some statewide races.” Among…

Read More Read More

Trump seeks vast, potentially costly U.S. stake in Venezuelan oil industry

Trump seeks vast, potentially costly U.S. stake in Venezuelan oil industry

The Washington Post reports: The Trump administration is negotiating a long-term stake in a vast share of Venezuela’s oil fields, according to three people close to the discussions, a costly and legally precarious proposal that aims to nudge reluctant energy companies to drill in the risky region. The contours of the plan, which is still evolving and could change or fall apart, would involve the United States taking more direct control over Venezuelan reserves as crime and steep logistical challenges…

Read More Read More

What if Canada joined the European Union?

What if Canada joined the European Union?

Ishaan Tharoor writes: Ever since Trump’s combustive, combative second term began, a conversation once consigned to academic circles and the parlor rooms of Brussels and Ottawa has entered the mainstream: forget being the fifty-first U.S. state—what if Canada became the twenty-eighth member of the E.U.? A widely read column in The Economist from January, 2025, laid out the case: Canada’s huge territory and abundant natural resources offered a complement to the crammed, resource-sparse European continent; Canada’s social-welfare state and social-democratic…

Read More Read More

RFK Jr lied in Senate confirmation hearings, newly revealed documents indicate

RFK Jr lied in Senate confirmation hearings, newly revealed documents indicate

The Guardian reports: Newly obtained documents indicate that the US health secretary, Robert F Kennedy Jr, lied during two congressional hearings last year, when he told lawmakers who held the key to his confirmation that a 2019 visit to Samoa had “nothing to do with vaccines”. Letters obtained by the Guardian and the Associated Press contradict that testimony. In one he wrote to the Samoan prime minister before the trip, Kennedy explicitly said he wanted to study the measles, mumps…

Read More Read More

Trump champions data centers as Republicans turn against them

Trump champions data centers as Republicans turn against them

The Washington Post reports: As voters in both parties grow anxious about the rapid build-out of data centers, President Donald Trump remains one of the tech industry’s most prominent champions — putting him increasingly at odds with members of his own party. Nowhere is that divergence clearer than in Texas, where Trump travels Thursday to campaign for Ken Paxton, the state’s attorney general and Republican Senate candidate. The state has courted some of the country’s biggest data center projects, but…

Read More Read More

Max Tegmark: Why is AI unregulated?

Max Tegmark: Why is AI unregulated?

  The biggest danger facing mankind is a machine that can “outsmart the whole species”, argues Max Tegmark, professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and founder of the Future of Life Institute. Tegmark tells host Steve Clemons that governments and tech companies are in a “race to replace” human labour, instead of solving human problems. “It’s aimed at getting more money and power to a very small number of individuals,” he says. But a slew of suicides…

Read More Read More

Democrats will force Senate vote on Israel’s human rights practices

Democrats will force Senate vote on Israel’s human rights practices

The New York Times reports: Senator Chris Van Hollen, Democrat of Maryland, on Thursday plans to introduce a resolution that would order the Trump administration to provide Congress with a detailed accounting of Israel’s human rights practices in the West Bank, laying the groundwork to force a vote on the matter in coming weeks. The measure, the latest bid by Democrats in Congress to challenge the policies and actions of Israel’s government, invokes a provision of the Foreign Assistance Act…

Read More Read More

Not American enough: The campaign to create second-class citizens

Not American enough: The campaign to create second-class citizens

Toluse Olorunnipa writes: For Carlos Alemán, the pinnacle of the dozen years since he became a U.S. citizen was the night in 2020 when he was elected to serve on the city council of Homewood, Alabama. One of the lowest moments came earlier this year, when he learned that some of the most powerful people in his state are attempting to ban immigrants like him from pursuing higher office. “It seems to be part of a project to reject anyone…

Read More Read More

U.S. intervened in criminal probe of the ‘most effective ATM machine from Venezuela to the external world’

U.S. intervened in criminal probe of the ‘most effective ATM machine from Venezuela to the external world’

The Washington Post reports: Senior U.S. officials intervened in an international criminal investigation into a Venezuelan businessman who was enlisted by the Trump administration to help assert control over Venezuela’s government and oil industries, according to two people familiar with the matter. The officials lobbied to resolve the case in Switzerland in a way that would avoid criminal charges and end travel restrictions against the Britain-based businessman, Alejandro Betancourt, and they have not acted on a Swiss arrest warrant against…

Read More Read More