What if your therapist were a corporate product?  @komorama.bsky.social recounts how ChatGPT analyzed a user’s emotional patterns and described how it could use them against her.  Full conversation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_xXx9KSFf4

Larry Summers, Jeffrey Epstein, and Other Elite Malefactors | @robertwrighter.bsky.social and psychologist @paulbloomatyale.bsky.social discuss the latest Epstein developments—including the Steve Bannon and Larry Summers revelations, whether MAGA can survive the fallout, and more!

Hollow vs. resonant: Modern society keeps optimizing for the hollow. @komorama.bsky.social explains.

"Despite what users say, the metrics are very clear: people love doomscrolling." Alex Komoroske: "That's not love, that's addiction." @komorama.bsky.social criticizes the amoral logic of engagement optimization.

Will One AI Rule Us All? | @robertwrighter.bsky.social and Alex Komoroske (@komorama.bsky.social), co-founder and CEO of Common Tools, discuss OpenAI’s business model and Alex’s plan to save us from its implications.

In some places, the falcon can still hear the falconer.

Maybe it’s good news for Vance that this poll shows declining Republican concern about AI. But that decline came after Trump did his 180 on AI—went from reflecting anxieties about AI that he sensed in middle America to reflecting the boundless optimism of his new friends in Silicon Valley.

In defense of Fox News reporter Alba Cuebas-Fantauzzi: It’s not really accurate to say that she fabricated her story about outrageous things SNAP recipients were supposedly saying in response to the prospect that the government shutdown would cost them their food subsidies.

“The climate crisis is an inequality crisis,” says @AmitabhBehar, executive director of Oxfam International. “The very richest individuals in the world are funding and profiting from climate destruction, leaving the global majority to bear the fatal consequences of their unchecked power.”

“When conferences like this convene to discuss a cutting edge technology, oftentimes, I think, our response is to be too self-conscious, too risk-averse. But never have I encountered a breakthrough in tech that so clearly calls us to do precisely the opposite.” JD Vance at the Paris AI Summit

Bannon’s conspicuous enlistment in the AI safety movement marks the emergence of a division within the MAGA coalition that will become more apparent over the next few years and could hurt JD Vance’s prospects for getting the Republican presidential nomination in 2028. More in the latest Earthling:

The average person in the richest 0.1 percent of humanity produces more carbon emissions in a single day than the average person in the bottom 50 percent of the wealth distribution does in an entire year. More in this week’s Earthling:

Trump went from reflecting middle America’s anxieties about AI to reflecting the boundless optimism of his new friends in Silicon Valley.

The split got deeper when, during the 2024 campaign, libertarian tech bros like David Sacks joined the Trump coalition and Trump became more dependent on Silicon Valley money. More from @robertwrighter.bsky.social

“This split on the right, between AI optimists and AI worriers, was more or less inevitable.” @robertwrighter.bsky.social

In the latest NonZero Newsletter : I use the Trump-Xi summit to illustrate how MSM amplifies Trump's meaningless provocations while distorting or downplaying his (rare) displays of good foreign policy judgment. This tendency reinforces the worst in him.

Robots can now do many parts of my job better than I can This has made me a bit anxious about my own obsolescence It has also led me to contemplate the one AI dystopia that I find plausible: A world where robots free elites of all dependence on most ordinary people. www.vox.com/the-highligh...

Ever wonder what kinds of things could go awry as our lives come more and more under the sway of AI algorithms floating out there somewhere in the cloud?

So the real story would seem to be this: Trump administration blunders into pointless provocation of China, China retaliates, and then sanity prevails and both sides agree to return to the status quo ante, stepping back from the brink. More below:

This week, after Amazon announced 14,000 corporate job cuts and UPS said it had cut that many jobs in its management ranks over the past 22 months, the Wall Street Journal made it official:

The more gratuitously negative Trump headlines the MSM features, the less attention will be paid to his genuinely dangerous behavior. (More below)

This week Trump and Xi each made concessions that put the world in a much better place than it was before. That's what good journalism would have conveyed. More from @robertwrighter.bsky.social below:

NEW: NYT’s Dangerous Distortion of the Trump–Xi Summit

In the latest issue of @nonzeronews.bsky.social, I examine Trump’s Venezuela campaign as a window into his foreign-policy instincts.

In the latest issue of my NonZero Newsletter, I consider @daniellarison.bsky.social's nominee for a “Trump Doctrine” and examine what Trump's assault on Venezuela says about his foreign policy instincts.

In the latest Earthling, the weekend edition of my @nonzeronews.bsky.social, I discuss how the US-China tech showdown reflects a massive failure of cognitive empathy.

"Export controls were not designed to maintain US technology hegemony or to slow down China... They were designed to control the spread of weapons of mass destruction, which is a much more narrow thing." Paul Triolo (more below)

NEW – Are you an AI pessimist or optimist? Take our test! Plus: US-China tech showdown, Gaza update, OpenAI hunts bad guys, new Israel-Evangelical synergy

Will AGI be our doom? | @robertwrighter.bsky.social and AI safety activist Liron Shapira discuss and decode the vision of AI apocalypse presented in @esyudkowsky.bsky.social's new book.

In this week’s Earthling, the weekend edition of @nonzeronews.bsky.social, I offer my answers to some basic questions about the Gaza deal:

Starlink satellites are now falling to Earth at a clip of one to two per day.

Kessler syndrome—a chain reaction of satellite collisions that could make Earth's orbit unusable—is becoming less hypothetical.

Artificial intelligence is giving a kind of validation to traditional Chinese medicine, according to a study covered in Scientific American.

As Bari Weiss takes the helm at CBS News, she would seem to have her work cut out for her on two fronts:

NEW – Bari Weiss, the New CBS News, and Gaza Plus: Space junk tipping point; East-West AI fusion; NZN Discord server! and more!

Bari Weiss, CBS, and Israel | @robertwrighter.bsky.social and Nikita Petrov discuss Paramount's $150M move to bring the Free Press founder in as editor-in-chief at CBS News. Plus: Trump's Gaza peace plan, Netanyahu on TikTok, a Prigozhin conspiracy theory, and more.

Really enjoyed this conversation with @stephenmacedo.bsky.social about his book on America's response to Covid and how political polarization, the class bias of experts, the politics of grantmaking, etc. etc.--got in the way of good policy. www.youtube.com/watch?si=7KH...

Had a great chat w/ Rob Malley about his new book on the history of Israel-Palestine peacemaking efforts. He's been involved in them and his co-author was involved on the Palestinian side. The result is uniquely illuminating.

Why the Israel-Palestine Conflict Persists | @robertwrighter.bsky.social and Robert Malley, co-author of the new book Tomorrow is Yesterday, discuss how failures of perspective-taking have doomed attempted solutions.

An AI race with China is 'completely crazy'—but saying that is 'just not really in the Overton window of mainstream politics in the United States at the moment.' – David Krueger

Did Trump have a neocon conversion experience? It's not impossible:

Spain became the fifth country (after Ireland, Slovenia, Iceland, and the Netherlands) to say it will not take part in the 2026 Eurovision Song Contest if Israel participates. More below:

"It's insanely broad. This is an open-ended war authorization against an untold number of countries, organizations and persons." - Harvard law professor @jacklgoldsmith.bsky.social on proposed anti-cartel legislation. More below:

"The question is whether we will govern this transformation together or let it govern us." – UNSG Antonio Guterres on international AI governance. More below:

"BAD THINGS ARE GOING TO HAPPEN!!!" – Trump threatening Afghanistan after they rejected his plan for renewed US military presence at Bagram Air Base. More below:

In this week's Earthling, the weekend edition of @nonzeronews.bsky.social, I look at the UN’s new push for AI governance, Trump’s rejection of global rules, and the risks that attitude poses for all of us.

The truth is that every grim scenario, including AI-abetted pandemics and a socially destabilizing pace of job displacement, is a loss of control scenario: If these things happen, that means we’ve failed to control technology adequately.

“You hear lots of people say that a great deal is when both sides win. That is a bunch of crap. In a great deal you win—not the other side. You crush the opponent and come away with something better for yourself.” – President Donald Trump, who is now seemingly entering his neocon era. More below:

“Five or ten years ago, everyone agreed that we needed international cooperation—everyone I talked to in the safety community. And then I think people went to Washington and started playing insider politics.” @davidskrueger.bsky.social

Even people who declare themselves members of the “AI Safety” community are saying little if anything about international governance and are singing along with Sam about the need to “beat China.”