Trending Now Gift Ideas For Everyone On Your List Mashable's Best: E-readers, robovacs, laptops, earbuds, smart home and more Mashable Selects Look Up Safety Net Say More Mashable @Home In My Bag Versus Creator Playbook Getting Technical with Mashable All Series Midterms deliver clear message: 'The AI reckoning is here' The AI backlash had been brewing for awhile. Midterm voters made it official. Rebecca Ruiz is a Senior Reporter at Mashable. She frequently covers mental health, digital culture, and technology. Her areas of expertise include suicide prevention, screen use and mental health, parenting, youth well-being, and meditation and mindfulness.

Leading the Future, backed by Silicon Valley's biggest billionaires, had a war chest of $100 million and an aggressive stance against AI regulation. All of it didn't add up to much on Tuesday night. Leading the Future, the biggest pro-AI super PAC network, is walking away from the midterm elections with just over $20 million still in the bank and a roster of dozens of successful congressional candidates from both sides of the aisle. At first glance, that looks like a win. The details tell another story, though.

The Dell Laptop Buying Guide 2026: Which XPS or Alienware Laptop Should You Buy? The Dell Laptop Buying Guide UK: Which Dell Laptop Should You Buy? When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission. It's not just Sam Altman: AI will ruin PC gaming in ways you don't expect From platforms like Steam to giant publishers like EA to the continuing RAM crisis, AI is making pretty much everything worse for the world's biggest entertainment medium. Good lord, it's been a bad week for gaming.

Democrats maintain a firm grip on California. But they face mounting pressure to balance the state budget, usher in more government efficiency, build homes and solve affordability, figure out wildfire liability and regulate AI.

Why do the midterms matter? Protesters dressed as cardboard robots chanted and danced to a drumbeat as they protested against new data centres outside Oakland City Hall last month. Their concerns largely focused on how the centres -- which process large amounts of digital information -- might strain the energy grid. "Power prices have gone up so much in Oakland that some people are thinking of shutting off their power," said Carlos Gutierrez, an activist for Communities for a Better Environment, an environmental justice group. "And the city is planning to provide power to a data centre instead." Opposition to data centres is growing across the United States, as residents express concern about their rapid expansion.

'Artists are the first to be thrown under the bus' H Morgan-Harris (right) and Ran Stanton at Tortuga Studios in St Peters, in Anthony Albanese's electorate. 'Artists are the first to be thrown under the bus' H Morgan-Harris (right) and Ran Stanton at Tortuga Studios in St Peters, in Anthony Albanese's electorate. Disquiet grows in Albanese's back yard as Grayndler artists unite against'insane' AI proposal The prime minister is facing growing discontent within his own electorate as creatives push back against the federal government's proposal to allow AI companies to scrape everything Australians create online. Anthony Albanese's seat of Grayndler in Sydney's inner west is home to more than 3,000 cultural and creative businesses, and 10% of its workers are employed in cultural and creative fields - compared with 4.2% nationally. He has held it on a safe margin for three decades, and has spoken of its high representation of live music, theatre and artist spaces with pride .

AI national security risks are growing as advocacy groups warn that a lack of federal oversight at companies like OpenAI and Nvidia leaves sensitive trade secrets vulnerable.

Image caption, The Gruffalo has been a staple of children's bookshelves since 1999 Axel Scheffler, whose illustrations have captivated children since 1999, said he wanted AI companies to stop using artists' work without permission. The Gruffalo, written by London-born children's author Julia Donaldson, tells the story of a mouse who outsmarts a beast. I've been in touch with a lawyer in Germany, Scheffler said. There have been illustrators taking legal action against AI companies and I'm seriously considering it. I just want them to stop.

Anthropicfiled paperwork to go public on Monday, and while its list of business risk factors spans the fanciful (sentient AI) and the mundane (losing its executives), one stands above the rest as a likely source of headaches in the near future: the "evolving and uncertain regulatory and political environment." With an expected IPO around mid-November, and new representatives from the midterms elections to be sworn in in January, the company has a scant few months before it's almost guaranteed to incur even more political headaches. While the current Republican-controlled Congress has not put its political will behind constraining AI companies -- either the technology they produce or the resources they consume -- Americans of both parties are largely agreed in their opposition to data centers and concern about AI displacing jobs. With the executive branch already willing to create difficulty for Anthropic, the predicted "blue wave" of the midterms may result in the company landing on the wrong side of the legislative branch too. Anti-data center sentiment has absolutely been a factor in the midterms.

Anthropic thinks "closing the loop" is the best path to AI triumph--and a recipe for "existential" threats to humanity. Anthropic has officially filed the prospectus for its initial public offering, which means the AI lab has put all kinds of formerly private information on display. While the prospectus contains the eye-popping revenue--and even larger expenditures--you might expect, the biggest section of the filing by far is given over to "risk factors," which are all the things that could squash Anthropic's big plans. While much has been made about the extent to which AI represents an existential threat to humankind, the specific mechanisms by which it could bring about that destruction are largely opaque. If nothing else, the 94 pages that Anthropic's prospectus devotes to risk factors make clear both where it sees the danger coming from, and the ways in which its researchers are running toward it in order to win the AI arms race.