The U.S. economy is growing, but not evenly. What began as an uneven rebound from the Covid pandemic has hardened into what many economists describe as a "K-shaped" economy, in which higher-income households pull ahead while lower-income households fall further behind. High interest rates, rising costs and the rapid growth of artificial intelligence could deepen those divides, economists warn. "We are returning to a typical pattern of extremely high income inequality, and it now stands at a 60-year peak," Beth Ann Bovino, chief economist at U.S. Bank, wrote in a recent report. "The worry is not just where we stand now, but also whether ongoing developments will worsen the situation."

This story appears in the March 2026 print edition. While some stories from this issue are not yet available to read online, you can explore more from the magazine . Get our editors' guide to what matters in the world, delivered to your inbox every weekday. America Isn't Ready for What AI Will Do to Jobs Does anyone have a plan for what happens next? In 1869, a group of Massachusetts reformers persuaded the state to try a simple idea: counting. The Second Industrial Revolution was belching its way through New England, teaching mill and factory owners a lesson most M.B.A. students now learn in their first semester: that efficiency gains tend to come from somewhere, and that somewhere is usually somebody else. They were operating at speeds that the human body--an elegant piece of engineering designed over millions of years for entirely different purposes--simply wasn't built to match. The owners knew this, just as they knew that there's a limit to how much misery people are willing to tolerate before they start setting fire to things. Still, the machines pressed on. Check out more from this issue and find your next story to read. So Massachusetts created the nation's first Bureau of Statistics of Labor, hoping that data might accomplish what conscience could not. By measuring work hours, conditions, wages, and what economists now call "negative externalities" but were then called "children's arms torn off," policy makers figured they might be able to produce reasonably fair outcomes for everyone. A few years later, with federal troops shooting at striking railroad workers and wealthy citizens funding private armories--leading indicators that things in your society aren't going great--Congress decided that this idea might be worth trying at scale and created the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Measurement doesn't abolish injustice; it rarely even settles arguments. But the act of counting--of trying to see clearly, of committing the government to a shared set of facts--signals an intention to be fair, or at least to be caught trying. It's one way a republic earns the right to be believed in. The BLS remains a small miracle of civilization.

It is extraordinary enough to see the world's top central banker make an unscheduled video statement on social media. My first thought upon seeing the post from the Federal Reserve chair Jerome Powell was: Is this an AI deepfake? That sense did not go away as I listened to what were indeed the real words of the world's most important financial official. The background here is a long-running spat between President Trump and the man responsible for setting interest rates in the US and indirectly much of the rest of the world. In theory, this has officially been about the cost of a renovation project at the Federal Reserve, the US equivalent of the Bank of England.

All 50 economists expect the Bank of Japan to raise its benchmark rate to 0.75% at a policy meeting set to conclude next Friday, a Bloomberg survey of BOJ watchers found. The Bank of Japan will raise its policy interest rate next week, resuming a hiking cycle for the first time since January, according to a Bloomberg survey of BOJ watchers. All 50 economists expect the central bank to raise its benchmark rate to 0.75% at a policy meeting set to conclude next Friday, according to the poll. This is the first time every respondent has predicted a rate shift under Gov. Kazuo Ueda's watch. The BOJ is expected to restart the cycle of hikes after pausing for months to assess the impact from U.S. President Donald Trump's tariff campaign.

Large Language Models (LLMs) may one day replace search engines as the primary portal to information on the Web. In this article, we investigate the societal challenges that such a change could bring. We focus on the roles of LLM Providers, Content Creators, and End Users, and identify 15 types of challenges. With each, we show current mitigation strategies -- both from the technical perspective and the legal perspective. We also discuss the impact of each challenge and point out future research opportunities.

OpenAI Staffer Quits, Alleging Company's Economic Research Is Drifting Into AI Advocacy Four sources close to the situation claim OpenAI has become hesitant to publish research on the negative impact of AI. The company says it has only expanded the economic research team's scope. OpenAI has allegedly become more guarded about publishing research that highlights the potentially negative impact that AI could have on the economy, four people familiar with the matter tell WIRED. The perceived pullback has contributed to the departure of at least two employees on OpenAI's economic research team in recent months, according to the same four people, who spoke to WIRED on the condition of anonymity. One of these employees, Tom Cunningham, left the company entirely in September after concluding it had become difficult to publish high-quality research, WIRED has learned.

This article analyzes the existential risks artificial intelligence (AI) poses to humanity, tracing the trajectory from current AI to ultraintelligence. Drawing on Irving J. Good and Nick Bostrom's theoretical work, plus recent publications (AI 2027; If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies), it explores AGI and superintelligence. Considering machines' exponentially growing cognitive power and hypothetical IQs, it addresses the ethical and existential implications of an intelligence vastly exceeding humanity's, fundamentally alien. Human extinction may result not from malice, but from uncontrollable, indifferent cognitive superiority.

The government has shut down - what's next? Will a government shutdown hurt the economy? From Wall Street trading floors to the United States Federal Reserve to economists sipping coffee in their home offices, the first Friday morning of the month typically brings a quiet hush around 8:30am Eastern time in the US [12:30 GMT] as everyone awaits the Labor Department's crucial monthly jobs report. But with the government shut down, no information was released on Friday about hiring in September. Hiring has ground nearly to a halt, threatening to drag down the broader economy. Yet at the same time, consumers -- particularly higher-income earners -- are still spending, and some businesses are ramping up investments in data centres developing artificial intelligence models.

Forget the glorious successes of past breakthroughs--the real justification for research investment is what we get for our money. MIT Technology Review You can read more from the series here. Given the draconian cuts to US federal funding for science, including the administration's proposal to reduce the 2026 budgets of the National Institutes of Health by 40% and the National Science Foundation by 57%, it's worth asking some hard-nosed money questions: How much we be spending on R&D? How much value do we get out of such investments, anyway? To answer that, it's important to look at both successful returns and investments that went nowhere. How Trump's policies are affecting early-career scientists--in their own words Every year, we recognize extraordinary young researchers on our Innovators Under 35 list. Recent honorees told us how they're faring under the new administration.

Inside Anthropic's Big Washington Push Welcome back to In the Loop, new twice-weekly newsletter about AI. If you're reading this in your browser, why not subscribe to have the next one delivered straight to your inbox? The AI industry has descended upon Washington. The industry recently pledged up to $200 million toward new super PACs aimed at influencing upcoming elections. And on Monday, I attended an event that epitomized this swell of capital and effort: The Anthropic Futures Forum.