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.

Reid Hoffman Wants Silicon Valley to'Stand Up' Against the Trump Administration The LinkedIn cofounder and frequent Trump target has a simple message for his peers: "Just speak up about the things that you think are true." Reid Hoffman doesn't do much in half measures. He cofounded LinkedIn, of course, and helped bankroll companies including Meta and Airbnb in their startup days. He has also fashioned himself, via books, podcasts, and other public appearances, as something of a public intellectual--a pro-capitalist philosopher who still insists that tech can be a force for good. Most recently, Hoffman has emerged as one of Silicon Valley's most prominent defenders of artificial intelligence . His newest book, 2025's, makes the case that AI won't diminish human capacity but will instead amplify it. Hoffman even relied on AI to make one of the most unconventional--and perhaps uncomfortable, depending on your view of AI-generated creativity--Christmas gifts I've heard of lately. Whatever you think of Hoffman's utopian views on AI, credit where due: He's also a very outspoken critic of President Trump--a rare trait in a tech world that's grown increasingly quiet, or cozy, when it comes to the cruelties of the US administration. Hoffman's overt political views haven't been without consequence: Trump has twice threatened to launch investigations into him, most recently calling on Attorney General Pam Bondi to dig into Hoffman's ties to Jeffrey Epstein . He has subsequently called for the government to release the Epstein files in full.) Despite those threats, Hoffman isn't pulling punches: When we sat down to tape this episode in mid-December, he readily called out the administration for degrading American government, criticized his peers for keeping their heads down, and urged Silicon Valley to stop pretending that neutrality is a virtue. If only more billionaires were saying it. So glad to have you here. I'm glad to be here. We like to start these conversations with some very fast questions. What's the hardest lesson you've ever had to learn? Probably when to give up.

-- Joint activity describes when more than one agent (human or machine) contributes to the completion of a task or activity. Designing for joint activity focuses on explicitly supporting the interdependencies between agents necessary for effective coordination amon g agents engaged in the joint activity. This builds and expands upon designing for usability to further address how technologies can be designed to act as effective team players. Effective joint activity requires supporting, at minimum, five primary macroc ognitive functions within teams: Event Detection, Sensemaking, Adaptability, Perspective - Shifting, and Coordination. Supporting these functions is equally as important as making technologies usable. We synthesized fourteen heuristics from relevant literatu re including display design, human factors, cognitive systems engineering, cognitive psychology, and computer science to aid the design, development, and evaluation of technologies that support joint human - machine activity . Recent advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) technologies have accelerated human - machine interactions progress ing from simple tool - based engagements to complex cognitive collaborations [1] . Machines are being designed to perform an increasing set of functions and are being expected to engage more deeply in the collaborative joint activit ies related to these functions. This shift in machine capabilities and expectations demands a corresponding re - evaluation and broadening of design and evaluation principles to support joint human - machine activity in ways that lie outside the boundaries of trad itional usability methods and models [2] . Traditional usability heuristics, such as those proposed by [3], provide a strong foundation focusing primarily on surface - level interactions such as enhancing the ease of use, efficiency, and satisfaction in human - machine interaction . These heuristics are primarily oriented towards actions and responses but offer limited support for the essential macrocognitive functions associated with effective teamwork including event detection, sensemaking, adaptability, perspective shifting, and co ordination, all of which are vital in the close collaboration of humans and machine s with joint activities [2], [4], [5], [6] . These heuristics are primarily oriented towards actions and responses but offer limited support for the essential macrocognitive functions associated with effective teamwork including event detection, sensemaking, adaptability, perspective shifting, and co ordination . A ll of these macrocognitive functions are vital in the close collaboration of humans and machines with joint activities in high - stakes and dynamic environments with little room for error [2], [5] . This reliance on macrocognitive functions is evident in domains where the ability to process complex information and adapt to changing conditions is crucial.

What has long been asserted by big tech skeptics is now the official position of the US district court for DC. Judge Amit Mehta ruled that Google broke antitrust law by spending tens of billions annually to secure default search engine status across major web browsers, including Safari and Firefox. This coordinated campaign resulted in Google securing 90% of the global search market, despite its engine increasingly answering queries with spam pages, AI gibberish and product placements. The court has yet to determine Google's penalties. But this opinion marks a turning point in the ongoing fight to regulate Silicon Valley.

Until mid-2023, artificial intelligence was something of a niche topic in Washington, largely confined to small circles of tech-policy wonks. That all changed when, nearly two years into Gina Raimondo's tenure as Secretary of Commerce, ChatGPT's explosive popularity catapulted AI into the spotlight. Raimondo, however, was ahead of the curve. "I make it my business to stay on top of all of this," she says during an interview in her wood-paneled office overlooking the National Mall on May 21. "None of it was shocking to me." But in the year since, even she has been startled by the pace of progress.

Popular artificial intelligence tools are becoming more covertly racist as they advance, says an alarming new report. A team of technology and linguistics researchers revealed this week that large language models like OpenAI's ChatGPT and Google's Gemini hold racist stereotypes about speakers of African American Vernacular English, or AAVE, an English dialect created and spoken by Black Americans. "We know that these technologies are really commonly used by companies to do tasks like screening job applicants," said Valentin Hoffman, a researcher at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and co-author of the recent paper, published this week in arXiv, an open-access research archive from Cornell University. Hoffman explained that previously researchers "only really looked at what overt racial biases these technologies might hold" and never "examined how these AI systems react to less overt markers of race, like dialect differences". Black people who use AAVE in speech, the paper says, "are known to experience racial discrimination in a wide range of contexts, including education, employment, housing, and legal outcomes". Hoffman and his colleagues asked the AI models to assess the intelligence and employability of people who speak using AAVE compared to people who speak using what they dub "standard American English".

Most of Joe Biden's past supporters see him as too old. An 81-year-old president with an unsteady step is a turn-off. But Donald Trump, Biden's malignant, 77-year-old predecessor, vows to be a dictator for "a day", calls for suspending the constitution and threatens Nato. "Russia, if you're listening", his infamous 2016 shout-out to Vladimir Putin, still haunts us eight years on. Democracy is on the ballot again.

OpenAI cofounder Reid Hoffman says the company is better off with Sam Altman restored as CEO, and he was shocked that board members he used to serve alongside would think otherwise. Hoffman, who left OpenAI's board in March after cofounding the competitor Inflection AI, offered his first comments on the recent chaos at OpenAI on stage at WIRED's LiveWIRED 30th anniversary event in San Francisco on Tuesday. "Surprise would be an understatement," he said about his reaction to learning of Altman's firing. After employees and investors revolted, Altman got his job back days later. "We are in a much better place for the world to have Sam as CEO. He's very competent in that," said Hoffman, who with Elon Musk and other wealthy tech luminaries formed the earliest vision for OpenAI when it was founded in 2015.