United States Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont and Representative Greg Casar of Texas introduced a new bill that would impose sweeping restrictions on the artificial intelligence industry, including banning the development of what is called artificial superintelligence. The legislation, introduced on Wednesday, comes weeks after top AI industry researchers issued dire warnings that the technology could wipe out humanity within the next decade, according to a wave of industry insiders. The legislation would also call for a temporary pause on the development of advanced AI systems until a regulatory body that can oversee and develop safety standards is put in place, as well as establishing a cabinet-level department called the Department of Artificial Intelligence that would oversee the industry. The proposed agency would be tasked with regulating what are called frontier models -- a term referring to the most advanced AI models in development. The agency would ensure the models are not dangerous, and it would be empowered to remove the models from circulation if they do, in fact, become dangerous and supervise their destruction.

One woman's meth addiction was so bad, the only option left might have been brain surgery. Then a single session of noninvasive, focused ultrasound seemed to do what years of treatment could not. Erin McNulty had been missing for weeks when her mother, Linda, sat down on a chair in her living room, exhausted. Linda had put in her usual seven-day workweek at the antiques shop she runs near Burlington, Vermont. She'd spent her free evenings driving around, trying to track down her daughter. Erin, 45 at the time, had been using methamphetamine for years. Her substance use started in high school--first alcohol, then marijuana, and eventually heroin. Erin's brother used heroin, too. When Linda found out, she started driving her kids to a methadone clinic three hours away in Massachusetts. The methadone helped, but it made Erin feel tired all the time, so she started using cocaine to stay awake. There were stretches of sobriety--she had her daughter during one of them, in 2008.

For decades, the senator has argued that concentrated wealth threatened American democracy. Now he's betting that frustration with Big Tech, billionaires, and unchecked AI is reaching a tipping point. It's hard to believe Bernie Sanders . Not because the longtime Vermont senator bears the hallmarks of a liar. Yes, he's a career politician, but the 84-year-old progressive torchbearer counts more viral memes than scandals to his name. Rather, it's hard to believe Bernie Sanders because, for decades, he's told Americans that this country can radically change, while championing ideas too far afield from the status quo to really have a chance. He wants to bring billionaires to heel, for one. And implement universal, government-run health care. If Sanders had his way, it wouldn't even exist. I believe it, and WIRED champions it. Sanders, though, is now hard at work adding one more big, improbable change to the pile: Since 2023, he's been advocating for firm and decisive regulation of the AI industry . In March of this year, Sanders and his frequent collaborator, Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, proposed legislation that would halt data center construction until a series of safeguards are implemented. In June, Sanders announced the American AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act, which would essentially tax AI's richest companies and result in direct payments to American citizens. I wanted to talk to Sanders about those bills, and his perspective on AI more broadly. On a deeper level, though, I was curious about how Sanders sees the barriers to regulation--from tech oligarchs and deep-pocketed super PACs, to a federal administration happier to enrich itself via technology than actually govern it--and whether he thinks those seemingly intractable obstacles can be overcome. After a few months of haranguing, Sanders agreed to sit down, which is how I found myself in his modest DC campaign office watching the senator--thoughtful, genuine, vociferous as ever--grapple in real time with what he describes as "the most consequential, transformational technology in the history of humanity." Sanders and I spoke on Tuesday, June 23, as the New York Democratic primary was underway. I woke up the next day, our conversation echoing in my head, to find that a coalition of democratic socialists had swept their respective elections and sent party stalwarts into an existential tailspin. A few hours later, New Jersey representative Frank Pallone, the top Democrat on the House Energy and Commerce Committee, became the most mainstream member of the party to publicly support an AI data center moratorium .

Imagine what happens if jobs actually start disappearing. Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders don't agree on much. But both think that AI is a disaster for the working class. The Vermont senator recently wrote that "AI oligarchs do not want to just replace specific jobs. They want to replace workers."

As slick, machine-generated visuals become ubiquitous, artists and designers are embracing a style of handmade imperfection. Two and a half years ago, Christine Tyler Hill, a designer and artist in Burlington, Vermont, began working as a crossing guard in her neighborhood. The city paid her twenty dollars an hour, but the real draw was the chance to get to know local families and "be more enmeshed with my very immediate, outside-my-door community," she told me recently. She was tired of staring at a screen doing design work, and new clients were getting harder to come by, in part, she surmised, because of the rise of generative artificial intelligence . She began documenting her crossing-guard shifts on Instagram, posting mini comics about the frigid weather, the charming habits of commuting children, and the beauty of an overflowing trash can.

However, the activations of well-fitting KANs tend to exhibit pathologically high-curvature oscillations, making them difficult to interpret, and standard regularization penalties do not prevent this. Here we derive a basis-agnostic curvature penalty and show that penalized models can maintain accuracy while achieving substantially smoother activations. Accounting for how function composition shapes curvature, we prove an upper bound on the full model's curvature relative to the curvature penalty, and use this to motivate richer forms of penalties. Scientific machine learning is increasingly bottlenecked by the trade-off between accuracy and interpretability. Results such as ours that improve interpretability without sacrificing accuracy will further strengthen KANs as a practical tool for both prediction and insight.

Things to Do in L.A. Kate Brody's 7-year-old son plays at home in North Hollywood on March 14. This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here . Early childhood experts say excessive screen time displaces hands-on learning and peer interaction critical to development. At least 11 states have considered legislation limiting technology in the classroom this year.

Poodle crossbreeds have grown overwhelmingly popular, sparking controversy in dog parks and kennel clubs alike. The features of doodles such as Peaches (above), a goldendoodle, have become the canine equivalent of Instagram face. Meet the Breeds, the American Kennel Club's annual showcase of purebred dogs, took place over two eye-wateringly cold days in early February at the Javits Center, in Manhattan. About a hundred and fifty of the two hundred and five varieties recognized as official breeds by the A.K.C., the long-standing authority in the U.S. dog world, were in attendance for the public to ogle, fondle, and coo "So cute!" to, including the basset fauve de Bretagne, a hunting hound from France that's one of three newly recognized breeds recently allowed into the purebred pantheon. Some of the dogs had competed in the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show earlier in the week, and past champions had their ribbons on display. In spite of the frigid weather, pavilions hosting the more popular breeds--the pug, the Doberman pinscher, the Great Dane, the St. Bernard--were packed. Lesser-known varieties, such as the saluki, the Löwchen, and the Lapponian herder, drew sparser crowds. There were exhibition spaces for each breed, and on the back walls were three adjectives supposedly describing that particular type of dog's temperament. There is, in fact, no evidence that temperament is consistent within a breed, but the idea is deeply rooted in dogdom. I stopped to caress the velvety ear leather of a pharaoh hound ("Friendly, Smart, Noble"), a sprinting breed once used to hunt rabbits in Malta; accept kisses from a Portuguese water dog, bred to assist with retrieving tackle ("Affectionate, Adventurous, Athletic"); and have my photograph taken with a Leonberger, a German breed from the town of Leonberg, in southwest Germany ("Friendly, Gentle, Playful"). No one was supposed to be openly selling dogs, but, if you asked, the breeders would share their information. Excluding what are known as companion dogs, like the Leonberger, most of the animals at the show were designed for a purpose that is no longer required of them. In Great Britain, foxhounds are legally barred from chasing foxes. Consider the fate of the otterhound, an ancient variety with a noble heritage which was once used in the U.K. to hunt river otters, which were prized for their thick fur and disliked by wealthy landowners because they ate fish in their stocked ponds.

This happened as generative and agentic systems became essential in key sectors worldwide. This feature highlights the major AI ethics and policy developments of 2025, and concludes with a forward-looking perspective on the ethical and policy challenges likely to shape 2026.