Global affairs chief Chris Lehane wants to tone down the debate over AI's societal impacts--and get states to pass laws that won't derail OpenAI's meteoric rise. Three months ago, OpenAI cofounder Greg Brockman told me his concerns about a mounting public relations crisis facing artificial intelligence companies: Despite the popularity of tools like ChatGPT, an increasingly large share of the population said they viewed AI negatively. Since then, the backlash has only intensified. College commencement speakers are now getting booed for talking about AI in optimistic terms. Last month, someone threw a Molotov cocktail at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's San Francisco home and wrote a manifesto advocating for crimes against AI executives.

Minnesota Is Just the Beginning. California and New York Are'Next' The Trump administration appears to be planning to leverage the same playbook used in Minnesota to go after other blue states. The Trump administration appears to be deploying the same playbook it used in Minnesota --leveraging allegations of fraud to justify significant federal oversight --in other blue states across the country, starting with California and New York. "POTUS loves Minnesota and the people. It's a state where he received historic Republican support, and he has long called out [Governor Tim] Walz for his incompetence and terrible leadership," a senior White House official tells WIRED.