One Big Topic Didn't Come Up at the Debate. Thank God.

The first 2024 presidential debate unfolded Thursday night between President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump and it was, as fellow Slate writer Jill Filipovic put it, the "most painful two hours of television in living memory." If you missed it, good for you. If you did watch it, you'd be forgiven for not remembering the topics that were actually debated vaguely shouted about. In between Biden's excruciatingly painful and "nightmarishly confused" performance and Trump's boorish firehose of lies and falsehoods, the debate also ostensibly featured a wide range of topics like abortion, the economy, climate change, foreign policy in Ukraine and Israel, election integrity, immigration, veterans, race, crime, health care, and even which of the two candidates has a better golf game. However, there was one major issue that the debate failed to broach--despite the fact that it's one of the most (if not the most) consequential developments since the last election cycle: artificial intelligence.