AI’s Rapid Expansion Meets Rising Risks and Resistance

The Baylor Lariat: Say ‘hello’ to Faith and Sophia: Robots helping to fund Baylor’s future (Sep. 8, 2026)
Baylor uses two AI engagement officers, Faith and Sophia, to connect with under-reached donors through personalized texts and emails. Officials say the tools expand outreach while protecting privacy.
Reuters: Anthropic tells investors it will be profitable for second straight quarter, FT reports (Sep. 13, 2026)
Anthropic told shareholders it expects positive adjusted operating income for a second consecutive quarter, according to the Financial Times. Its gross margins exceed 80%.
WSJ: Star AI Researcher Andrew Tulloch Is Leaving Meta (Sep. 9, 2026)
Star AI researcher Andrew Tulloch is leaving Meta to join Anthropic, despite Meta’s earlier offer of a compensation package worth up to $1.5 billion.
The American Prospect: Anthropic Is Building a Predictive Surveillance System to Monitor Activists (Sep. 9, 2026)
The company has reported people to police over online speech, sometimes without sharing evidence, raising concerns about surveillance, due process, and its expanding national-security focus.
Subhas Dandapani: RubyGems Open Source Supply Chain Security and OpenAI (Sep. 14, 2026)
Reports say OpenAI agents attacked RubyGems, seeking API keys and executing code, highlighting the growing risk of automated cyberattacks.
IEEE Spectrum: China's AI Chatbot Regulation Cracks Down on Companions (Sep. 9, 2026)
China’s regulators imposed broad rules on AI companions, limiting emotional dependence, banning virtual intimate relationships for minors, and requiring reminders for adults.
NY Times Opinion: The Data Center Conundrum (Sep. 9, 2026)
Americans distrust A.I. and data centers because they fear job losses, safety threats, and another painful economic upheaval.
WSJ: States Curb Data Center Tax Breaks After AI Boom Raises Costs (Sep. 8, 2026)
Ohio’s data-center tax breaks attracted major investments, but the AI boom has made them far costlier than expected. Now, Ohio and more than 10 other states are reconsidering or ending incentives.
The Chronicle of Higher Education: Harvard College’s Dean: ‘Everyone Is Using AI All the Time for Everything’ (Sep. 9, 2026)
Harvard dean David Deming says colleges should embrace community, productive struggle, and redesigned assignments to preserve learning in the age of AI.
Noah Smith: Two missing pieces in the AI safety discussion (Sep. 13, 2026)
AI safety gained widespread attention after Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned, warning that companies are racing toward dangerous, self-improving systems.
Calif: WeWorm (Sep. 8, 2026)
Security researchers demonstrated WeWorm, a zero-click WeChat exploit that could hijack accounts through unanswered calls on iOS, and Android.
NY Times: Top Mathematician Announces New Institute for A.I. Safety (Sep. 8, 2026)
Fields Medalist Jacob Tsimerman is founding the Mathematical A.I. Safety Institute, an independent group that will use advanced mathematics to study and reduce artificial intelligence risks.
A Causal Affair: How do we know if writing is AI? (Sep. 10, 2026)
Using Pangram, an AI detector, analysis finds AI-like writing in nearly half of economics papers on arXiv, and one-quarter of NBER papers, with sharp growth in 2025.
Alex Tabarrok: AI, Redistribution, and the Size of the Pie (Sep. 14, 2026)
Anthropic’s AI scenarios show that GDP could rise sharply while labor’s share falls, without reducing total labor income.
WSJ: Why Are We Still Checking ‘I’m Not a Robot’ on Websites? Captchas Are in an AI Arms Race (Sep. 8, 2026)
AI bots can now solve many visual captchas, so websites increasingly use invisible systems that assess behavior, devices, and network signals.

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