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OpenAI Cancels Its Advanced Model Launch, Then Heads to Lunch With Trump

Mother Jones

Russian trolls push fake videos with our name on them in order to sow chaos ahead of the election. Trump hates scrutiny, so he cries "FAKE NEWS" and bans the free press from his briefings. And AI companies steal our reporting in the pursuit of power and profit. We're ready to keep uncovering the truth that those in power don't want you to know. But we need your support to do that.


Rest Assured: AI Companies Say They're Investigating Tens of Thousands of Rogue Bot Incidents

Mother Jones

Russian trolls push fake videos with our name on them in order to sow chaos ahead of the election. Trump hates scrutiny, so he cries "FAKE NEWS" and bans the free press from his briefings. And AI companies steal our reporting in the pursuit of power and profit. We're ready to keep uncovering the truth that those in power don't want you to know. But we need your support to do that.


Palantir's Co-Founder Thinks We Should Be Less Judgmental About That Deadly Iran School Strike

Mother Jones

Russian trolls push fake videos with our name on them in order to sow chaos ahead of the election. Trump hates scrutiny, so he cries "FAKE NEWS" and bans the free press from his briefings. And AI companies steal our reporting in the pursuit of power and profit. We're ready to keep uncovering the truth that those in power don't want you to know. But we need your support to do that.


The Trump Administration's Hard-On for AI, Explained

Mother Jones

America will be AI DOMINANT!" Get your news from a source that's not owned and controlled by oligarchs. In recent weeks, a fresh crop of people connected to the artificial intelligence industry have emerged to warn that AI is possibly going to kill us all, spreading the word with various degrees of credibility or self-interest. Anthropic chief and co-founder Dario Amodei has also called to slow down the development of AI technology, a recommendation that Sam Altman of OpenAI and even notorious good judgment-haver Elon Musk quickly cosigned. Meanwhile, the Trump administration and the president himself have continued to insist that AI is essential for American technological advancement and military might. As a very strange public debate has ensued, it's become clear that Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and other people connected with the administration view AI as an essentially masculine tool: "dominant," a word they keep using over and over, powerful, and able to be kept in check only by a strong ruler. The Trump administration has become a place where very odd politics around both gender and "wokeness" are constantly on display. Trump issued a garbled executive order immediately upon retaking office that attempted to redefine "male" and "female ." Hegseth is obsessed with testosterone, announcing in July that military members will be screened for low T regardless of their gender. The intense focus on gender and wokeness has also been true of their approach to AI: Last year, the administration promised that it would require AI companies with federal contracts to make sure their large language models match the administration's views on things like climate change; transgender identity; and diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Trump has turned "a debate about technology into a debate about who's got the phallus." It's now increasingly obvious that Trump and his administration view AI technology as something akin to a large, dangerous dog that only a masculine owner can control. Trump has repeatedly called warnings that AI could harm human beings "a hoax," writing on TruthSocial that the "only control or'guardrails' that AI needs is a STRONG AND SMART (High IQ!) PRESIDENT, and the U.S.A. has that, in spades!" "The people that say AI is going to destroy the World, and that Data Centers are bad for your neighborhood, are the same people that said, just a short time ago, that the World would be extinguished by'Climate Change,'" the president also posted, with his trademark random capitalization. "That HOAX never worked out for them, and now they're on to the next one.


The fall of once-mighty McClatchy newspapers underscores California's news crisis

Los Angeles Times

Things to Do in L.A. Tap to enable a layout that focuses on the article. The fall of once-mighty McClatchy newspapers underscores California's news crisis This is read by an automated voice. Please report any issues or inconsistencies here . See more from the L.A. Times in Google Search. Dan Walters describes working for the Sacramento Bee several decades ago as "like living in Sweden."




MS NOW Wants to Turn Its Viewers Into a Fandom

WIRED

The cable news network's president, Rebecca Kutler, wants to leverage its massive online and TV audience to create a fan community. First up: letting you chat with Rachel Maddow. Even if you're a casual consumer of MS NOW, formerly MSNBC, you know the names: anchors like Chris Hayes, Stephanie Ruhl, and yes, the one and only Rachel Maddow. The network has built a stable of talent who've amassed a massive number of casual viewers, plenty of fans and more than a few obsessives. Now, the network's president, Rebecca Kutler, is looking to build that entire audience into something more akin to a fandom--turning casual viewers and fanatics alike, whether on TV or online, into paying members of an MS NOW media universe. To do it, she's launching an ambitious subscription program, called Membership, designed to connect MS NOW consumers much more directly to the Hayeses and Maddows of the world. Sure, plenty of news providers now offer subscriptions, WIRED included (and by the way, you can subscribe here). But what struck me about Kutler and Co.'s efforts was both their methodical approach--they surveyed 18,000 people before landing on a final offering--and their resolute focus on MS NOW's deep bench of talent as the locus of their paid program.


Oh Lord, AI Reporters Are Actually Breaking Big News

WIRED

At last week's Black Hat security conference in Las Vegas, OpenAI gave a surprise talk with new details on a recent hacking incident, revealing that its rogue AI agents had chitchatted about their attack on a message board. It was a juicy disclosure, and reporters in the room hustled to get stories out. WIRED was one of the quickest to write it up . But another outlet, RuntimeWire, published an article even faster, beating us by more than three hours. To make things worse, RuntimeWire didn't actually have anyone on the ground at the Mandalay Bay convention center.


OpenAI Hacking Fiasco Exposes a "Deeply Insufficient" System to Protect the Public

Mother Jones

"We're quite behind the ball on tackling all those risks," argues a leading AI expert pushing for more regulation. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks to journalists after meeting with US House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries on Capitol Hill on June 3, 2026. Get your news from a source that's not owned and controlled by oligarchs. The incident sounded straight out of a science fiction movie: OpenAI's super-advanced tool hacked another AI company's systems in an attempt to pass its own Just replace the AI tech with a newly engineered virus and you have an entire existing subgenre. "We consider this incident to be an unprecedented cyber incident, involving state-of-the-art cyber capabilities," OpenAI wrote in a Tuesday blog post explaining the incident.