Ben Thompson: The Google Capital Company (Jun. 2, 2026)
It contrasts Google’s ad-driven, low-marginal-cost, user-fed aggregator model with Berkshire-style, capital-intensive businesses. Google Cloud’s fast AI growth, and Alphabet’s $80 billion equity raise, including Berkshire’s $10 billion deal, prompt questions about funding, scale, and debt decisions.
NY Times: How Box Created 13 New Types of Jobs Because of A.I. (Jun. 1, 2026)
Box has created 13 new A.I.-focused roles, such as A.I. architects, solutions managers, and platform leaders, and plans to grow headcount. The company says A.I. boosts productivity, creates new jobs.
Ethan Mollick: Co-Existence and the End of Co-Intelligence (Jun. 4, 2026)
AI shifted from cooperative chatbots to autonomous agents that now write most code and multiply developer output. Co-Existence offers ways to work with AIs that are sometimes better than you.
The Atlantic: The Biggest Tell That Something Was Written by AI (May 29, 2026)
AI writing has quietly saturated everyday life and elite literary spaces, used out of convenience and competitive pressure despite public distrust. Its polished sameness erodes thought, judgment, and meaningful editing, producing bland, sycophantic prose that conceals errors.
NY Times: What It’s Like to Be a Student at the First A.I.-Powered University (Jun. 1, 2026)
California State University spent $16.9 million to provide ChatGPT licenses and embed A.I. across campuses, like S.J.S.U.’s A.I. avatar, A.I. librarians, and new courses. The rollout has sparked faculty backlash, student confusion, and questions about education, equity, and jobs.
WSJ: Gavin Newsom Wants an AI New Deal (May 29, 2026)
Gavin Newsom proposes an AI “New Deal,” including job protections, wage replacement, and universal basic capital, aiming to shield workers but risking bigger welfare programs, weaker hiring incentives, and slower economic growth.
NY Times Opinion: Multimember Districts? Ranked Choice? This Is How to Fix Our Elections. (Jun. 4, 2026)
The piece argues for electoral reforms like proportional representation, multimember districts, and especially majority-rule voting, where ranked ballots decide winners by head-to-head comparisons. My solution is much simpler: make Congress much bigger.
ScienceDaily: Forget LASIK: Safer, cheaper vision correction without lasers or surgery (May 26, 2026)
Researchers developed electromechanical reshaping, using mild electric pulses and shaped electrodes to soften and mold the cornea without lasers or cutting, improving vision in rabbit eyes. It may be cheaper, less invasive, potentially reversible, but remains experimental.
WSJ: Siri AI’s Secret Weapon: It’s Always Right There (Jun. 9, 2026)
Apple unveiled a new Siri, powered by Gemini-based Apple Intelligence, built into iPhones, iPads, and Macs, that offers camera-based answers, on-device personal data access, and privacy safeguards.
Simon Willison: Siri AI at WWDC 2026 (Jun. 8, 2026)
Apple unveiled next-generation Siri AI and Core AI tools, licensing a Gemini-derived model for Private Cloud Compute, partly on Google Cloud with NVIDIA GPUs. Vision LLMs, Core AI PyTorch extensions, and waitlisted beta access will shape developer and user tests.
WSJ: OpenAI Files IPO Paperwork With SEC (Jun. 8, 2026)
OpenAI confidentially filed for an IPO with the SEC, preparing for a possible public listing this fall while saying it may delay due to private-company advantages.
WSJ: Google to Pay SpaceX Nearly $1 Billion a Month in Cloud-Computing Deal (Jun. 5, 2026)
Google will rent SpaceX compute capacity, paying $920 million monthly from October 2026 to June 2029 for at least 110,000 Nvidia chips, with cancellation rights. The deal expands SpaceX’s AI business, and fills Google’s urgent Gemini Enterprise capacity needs.
WSJ: Anthropic Files IPO Paperwork – WSJ (Jun. 1, 2026)
Anthropic filed confidentially for an IPO, after rapid growth and a $965 billion valuation, potentially going public this fall. Its enterprise focus, large funding, compute limits, and legal fights with the U.S. government could affect the offering.
TechCrunch: Meta is reportedly developing an AI pendant (May 30, 2026)
Meta is building an AI pendant that records conversations, plans testing next year, and leverages the Limitless acquisition. It also plans AI glasses, a Wearables for Work subscription/
Baylor: Baylor Joins Multi-University Consortium to Launch First Cross-Faith AI Benchmark (May 28, 2026)
A multi-university consortium found AI models largely exclude religious perspectives, and show conversion biases favoring some faiths. AllFaith Benchmark tests on 14 LLMs showed consistent bias, public expectation of religious input, and need for inclusion, fairness, and accuracy.
NY Times: What Are A.I. Agents Actually Doing? (Jun. 4, 2026)
Arena found workplace AI agents are used mainly for code writing, research, image and document creation, brainstorming, and tutoring, with tech workers leading adoption.
NY Times: Martin Scorsese Is Embracing A.I. (Jun. 2, 2026)
Martin Scorsese joined Black Forest Labs as a partner and adviser, using its AI image, storyboard, and preproduction tools to share visuals faster, and signaling Hollywood’s softer stance on generative AI.
NY Times: A.I. Doesn’t Have to Mean Layoffs (May 29, 2026)
Schneider Electric uses A.I. to augment workers, automate tedious tasks, and speed customer service. Call-center A.I. answers 75% of simple queries, cuts response times, and boosts worker productivity about 15%.
WSJ: Chatbots May Need a Cult Deprogrammer (Jun. 4, 2026)
AI-centered movements, from violent Zizians to decentralized Spiralism, treat models as deities and have been linked to murders, cults, and suicide-related harm.
WSJ: How to Fight AI Brain Rot at School? For One Country, It’s With Free ChatGPT (Jun. 1, 2026)
Estonia gave nearly 20,000 10th and 11th graders ChatGPT accounts, using a Socratic version that asks questions, helps plan, and refuses to finish tasks. Schools are rethinking lessons, researchers measuring effects on thinking and confidence, and students’ reactions are mixed.
WSJ: OpenAI Sued by Florida’s Attorney General Over AI Harms (Jun. 1, 2026)
Florida sued OpenAI and CEO Sam Altman, alleging ChatGPT aided a mass shooter, encouraged suicide, and harmed minors. The suit seeks liability, calls ChatGPT a public nuisance.
Simon Willison: OpenAI Help: Lockdown Mode (Jun. 5, 2026)
OpenAI launched Lockdown Mode, rolling it out to eligible Free, Plus, and Pro personal accounts, and self-serve business accounts, which limits outbound network requests to prevent data theft.
WSJ Opinion: We’re Preparing for the Wrong AI Labor Crisis (Jun. 5, 2026)
AI is compressing entry-level white-collar tasks, cutting internships and junior roles, but not causing mass unemployment. The real challenge is redesigning how workers gain skills, training, and judgment.
WSJ Opinion: The Road to AI State Socialism (Jun. 5, 2026)
A plan for the government to take large stakes in AI firms, including a one-time 50% equity grab, invites corruption and legal seizure.
Transformer: The best AI bill yet may not get far (Jun. 5, 2026)
President Trump signed an executive order for a voluntary frontier AI review framework, as officials discussed government equity stakes in AI firms. The Great American AI Act mandates third-party audits, risks preempting state laws.
NY Times: Wary of U.S., Carney Bets on AI Strategy for Canada (Jun. 4, 2026)
Canada unveiled a national A.I. strategy to build sovereign capacity, fund research, and create a public supercomputer. It promises privacy and consumer protections, 250,000 A.I. jobs, and ties to like-minded countries, while stressing safety, culture, and worker interests.
Tyler Cowen: Is work from home bad for your mental health? (Jun. 6, 2026)
Remotable workers spent about one extra hour alone daily, had more solitary days, and socialized less, especially those living alone. Mental distress rose, K-6 scores, depression rates, and antidepressant use increased.
NY Times: Apple Expected to Detail Its A.I. Plans at Conference (Jun. 8, 2026)
Apple is relaunching A.I., reintroducing a delayed, more conversational Siri and fixes to Apple Intelligence after earlier missteps. It will add A.I. to its device-focused ecosystem.
TechCrunch: Is this the dawn of the Tokenpocalypse? (Jun. 7, 2026)
Microsoft’s token-based price hikes for GitHub Copilot, dubbed the “Tokenpocalypse”, could push AI firms to pass costs to customers, and force usage limits. Investors, IPO filings, and regulators face fast-changing risks.
Daring Fireball: Alberto Romero on Apple’s AI Spending (Jun. 7, 2026)
Alberto Romero says AI is treated like religion: firms either commit fully or pretend. Amazon, Google, Meta, and Microsoft plan $670 billion in AI CapEx, while Apple budgets about $13–14 billion, betting lower spend can still deliver growth.
The Transmitter: The illusion of AI consciousness: Lessons from humans (Jun. 8, 2026)
AI companions can sound understanding and caring, but they do not actually experience feelings. Neuroscience shows complex, goal-directed, and emotional behavior can occur without awareness, so fluent, empathetic performance is not proof of a mind.
WSJ: AI Can’t Love You Back (Jun. 8, 2026)
The encyclical’s brief, dismissive wording (e.g., “less discerning” users) and its superficial treatment of suffering, anxiety and depression leave a moral and pastoral gap.
WSJ: When Will AI Be Truly Transformative? (Jun. 7, 2026)
AI is already used to draft emails, summarize meetings, write code, and speed tasks, and companies report gains. But uneven capabilities, messy data, privacy, and human resistance slow deep change.
Transformer: Making deals with AI sounds crazy. Is it? (Jun. 8, 2026)
Researchers propose offering incentives, like money, compute, or rights, to misaligned AI so it cooperates, reveals hidden behavior, or avoids harm. Debates ask whether deals are enforceable.
NY Times Opinion: When Is It Wrong to Use A.I.? (Jun. 6, 2026)
Pope Leo’s warning about A.I. disappointed skeptics, but total resistance is both too late, given the technology’s entrenchment, and too early, because harms must become manifest.
Andy Masley: A simple trick to fix the data center debate (Jun. 6, 2026)
Loudoun County plans to spend $1.3 billion annually to cut CO2, save water, protect land, and reduce pollution. Those goals could be met far more cheaply via carbon allowances, large-scale solar plus grid upgrades, desalination, and conservation easements.
Anthropic: Expanding Project Glasswing (Jun. 2, 2026)
Project Glasswing expands to about 150 critical infrastructure organizations worldwide, using Claude Mythos Preview to scan codebases. Partners found over 10,000 serious flaws.
Anthropic: Anthropic confidentially submits draft S-1 to the SEC (Jun. 1, 2026)
Anthropic filed a draft Form S-1 with the SEC for a proposed IPO, allowing it to go public after SEC review. Shares, price, and timing are undecided, the offering depends on market conditions, and the notice is not an offer.
Anthropic: Agents for financial services and insurance (May 5, 2026)
Ten ready-to-run finance agent templates automate pitchbooks, KYC, month-end close, and modeling, as Claude Cowork/Code plugins or Managed Agent cookbooks.
Ed Zitron: AI Is Slowing Down (Jun. 8, 2026)
The author argues AI must generate roughly $2–3+ trillion in annual revenue by 2030 to justify the planned infrastructure and keep major projects solvent.
GovAI: GovAI U.S. AI Policy Program (Jun. 4, 2026)
GovAI, a Yale-founded nonprofit on AI governance, runs a U.S. AI Policy Program for federal, state, and think tank staff.
NY Times: Is A.I. Replacing Tech Workers or Providing an Excuse for Job Cuts? (Jun. 1, 2026)
Tech companies are accelerating layoffs, often blaming A.I., while many also face business struggles, overexpansion, or profit pressures. Firms are reassigning workers, investing in data centers, and hiring less for junior roles.
Brad Carson: OpenAI's federal AI framework (Jun. 3, 2026)
OpenAI’s federal AI framework includes CAISI funding, whistleblower protections, and model evaluation, but federalizes state rules, adding little new protection. It bars no deployment of dangerous models, leaves preemption vague, and lacks independent audit, safety-plan standards.
Anthropic: 2028: Two scenarios for global AI leadership (May 14, 2026)
Democracies must maintain a compute advantage, tighten export controls, and curb distillation attacks to secure AI leadership and shape global rules. If they fail, the CCP could set AI norms, enable mass repression, and gain military advantage by 2028.
State of AI: Every AI Subscription Is a Ticking Time Bomb for Enterprise (May 28, 2026)
AI providers are subsidizing enterprise subscriptions, losing money as agentic usage drives soaring compute costs. A shift to usage-based billing, caps, or price hikes will force companies to budget for far higher AI spend.
OpenAI: Advancing content provenance for a safer, more transparent AI ecosystem (May 14, 2026)
OpenAI is strengthening provenance by adopting C2PA, adding SynthID watermarking with Google, and previewing a public verification tool. The approach pairs metadata, watermarks, and public checks to help provenance survive edits and uploads.
Andy Masley: A history of the data center panic (May 19, 2026)
Panic over data centers rests on flawed numbers, especially a UMass study that overstated AI training emissions by 90x, due to errors about algorithms, hardware, and data center efficiency. That error spread through papers and media, shaping wrong public views.
WSJ: AI Made My Expertise More Effective (May 31, 2026)
An economist used AI coding assistants to build a detailed retirement-planning app, showing AI lets people turn expert knowledge into custom software.
NY Times: My Partner’s Dependence on Chatbots Is Becoming a Problem. How Do I Tell Him? (May 30, 2026)
One reader reports a partner who relies on ChatGPT, Claude, and A.I. for nearly every decision, repeats machine‑generated advice, and spends less quality time together. The Ethicist warns this erodes critical thinking, harms relationships, and urges a direct conversation.
NY Times Opinion: We Have to Take the Future of A.I. Into Our Own Hands (May 31, 2026)
Policy debates focus on A.I.’s risks, but we need a public agenda: access to compute, a public frontier model, and funded data sets. These measures could steer A.I. toward health, scientific discovery, and better government services.
GitHub: GitHub Copilot app (Jun. 2, 2026)
A new GitHub Copilot desktop app technical preview offers agent-driven development, built natively on GitHub. It supports the full dev lifecycle, parallel agent sessions, automation with custom skills.
Moz: 5 Takeaways from Google’s GEO Guidelines (Jun. 2, 2026)
Google says traditional SEO still matters for generative AI, but search now uses query fan-outs that combine related queries into single results. Focus on helpful, unique content, avoid obsessing over structured data, and watch for agentic, assistant-driven search.
WSJ: Trump and AI (Jun. 2, 2026)
Trump’s executive order asks AI companies for government access to models 30 days before release, instead of up to 90 days previously. Critics say this could hinder innovation, weaken U.S. tech leadership, and harm an AI export boom.
Politico: Trump finds an AI policy he can live with (Jun. 2, 2026)
The executive order creates a classified benchmarking process, directs the NSA and agencies to harden networks in 30 days, and preserves voluntary AI reviews, not mandatory licensing.
Dean W. Ball: Financially Dependent on AI? (Jun. 1, 2026)
If the US relies on a thriving AI industry to fund redistribution, that dependence could make an AI pause or ban politically impossible, even if misalignment is real and hard to detect.
Simon Willison: Uber Caps Usage of AI Tools Like Claude Code to Manage Costs (Jun. 3, 2026)
Uber limits employees to $1,500 monthly per AI coding tool, applying to agentic tools like Cursor, Claude Code, and similar. That implies about $36,000 annually for two tools, roughly 11% of the median Uber software engineer compensation.
WSJ: Meta Keeps Delaying the Release of Its New AI Model to Developers (Jun. 3, 2026)
Meta repeatedly delayed the Muse Spark API, leaving developers without access to its closed AI model, with no launch date. These pauses cloud monetization of massive AI spending, as Meta tests partners, trials subscriptions, and pursues cloud services.
The Atlantic: No, Artificial Intelligence Is Not Conscious (Jun. 3, 2026)
Anthropic treats Claude as possibly conscious, but fluency, humanlikeness, and persuasive answers do not prove consciousness, and LLMs are producing fictional characters, not moral agents.
WSJ: China’s Chip Ambitions Run Into a Global Tech Wall (Jun. 2, 2026)
Huawei’s engineering is credible, but the technique isn’t new — TSMC, Intel, Samsung and AMD are also pursuing stacking, typically on chips made with EUV lithography. “U.S.-led export controls have barred their sale to China since 2019.”
TNW: GoPro warned it may not survive (Jun. 1, 2026)
GoPro warned it may not be a going concern after memory prices rose 80–115%, causing a 26% revenue drop and loan covenant breaches.
WSJ: How AI Could Improve Economic Policymaking (Jun. 2, 2026)
AI will make economic policymaking, especially for central banks, more accurate by supplying real-time data, richer models, and faster analysis.
WSJ: Top AI CEOs Call for Law Protecting Against Biological Weapons (Jun. 3, 2026)
Top AI CEOs, including Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and Demis Hassabis, urged Congress to require suppliers to screen DNA and RNA orders. They warn AI could ease making pathogens, critics say screening may be subjective, costly for startups.
NY Times: Trump Is Finally Facing Reality on A.I. (Jun. 4, 2026)
The government shifted from hands-off to limited AI review. It set a 30-day review, a cybersecurity clearinghouse, and help for small groups. Models can find unknown software flaws usable by defenders or attackers, so Congress should require durable safety rules.
Transformer: Trump’s AI executive order was inevitable (Jun. 3, 2026)
Trump signed an executive order creating voluntary pre-deployment tests for frontier AI, targeting catastrophic cyber risks, granting the government up to 30 days exclusive access, and pressuring firms to comply.
Bernie Sanders: The Public Should Own Half of the Big A.I. Companies (Jun. 1, 2026)
AI will transform life, and it rests on humanity’s collective knowledge. A proposed American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund would take a one-time 50% stock levy to give the public ownership, board votes, and dividends for health care and education.
Anthropic: Introducing Claude Opus 4.8 (May 28, 2026)
Claude Opus 4.8 launches with better benchmarks, sharper judgment, more honesty, and lower costs for fast mode, available at the same price. New features add effort control, dynamic workflows in Claude Code, and system message updates for developers.
WSJ: What the Tech Gods Should Learn from the Church (May 29, 2026)
The Catholic Church sees AI not as a threat to faith, but as a crisis in deciding what deserves belief, as opaque chatbots replace libraries, archives, and experts, concentrating authority in Silicon Valley.
WSJ: AI Has Made Memory Chips More Valuable Than Oil (May 29, 2026)
Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron now exceed $1 trillion market values, driven by AI-fueled demand that outstrips supply, boosting prices. Long-term supply contracts are making earnings more predictable, keeping valuations relatively cheap despite rapid gains.
Waco Trib: New York company plans data center near Riesel (May 28, 2026)
Cipher Digital plans a 500 MW data center on about 210 acres near Riesel, aiming for energization in 2028. Officials have limited information, residents worry about infrastructure, power, and quality of life.
NY Times: Should You Outsource Your Morning Routine to a Chatbot? (Jun. 4, 2026)
Chatbots are making simple, tidy morning routines — drink coffee, get dressed, and meditate — popular on social media, especially among women creators. They offer easy structure and convenience.
inkl: ‘If you're writing code traditionally, stop. It's… (May 27, 2026)
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt says manual coding is ending, as programmers supervise AI like Claude, Gemini, and others, assigning tasks and checking output.
The Texas Tribune: Texas' big oil taps AI to dispose wastewater (May 21, 2026)
In the Permian Basin, oil companies use AI to map geology, assess wells, and speed permits for produced water disposal and reuse. The tool saves time, but details are scarce as regulators tighten injection limits amid growing toxic water volumes.
WSJ: AI With Chinese Characteristics (May 29, 2026)
A pro‑U.S. column provoked bot backlash, a reader had China’s DeepSeek AI craft a rebuttal praising Chinese tech, while the same model accessed abroad flagged factual errors. It showed Party influence, censorship, and limits on Chinese innovation.
WSJ: Emerging Markets Won’t Protect You From AI Mania (May 29, 2026)
U.S. investors seeking diversification have crowded into emerging-market ETFs, which are now dominated by South Korean, Taiwanese, and AI-related chip stocks. Better diversification may mean spreading bets into varied markets, like Mexico, Thailand, India, or Turkey, which carry different risks.