James Hughes

NYT published a very interesting piece on AI's job-loss impact. The economy added only 181,000 jobs in 2025, a shockingly low figure in a year that saw gross domestic product grow by a modest but respectable 2.2 percent. According to Lawrence Katz, a professor of economics at Harvard University, what we are experiencing now — a sustained period of “slow job growth and gradually rising unemployment without a real recession” — is virtually unprecedented. Many Americans already take a dim view of A.I. and feel as if they are being frog-marched to a future that they neither asked for nor wanted. If A.I. robs some of them of their livelihoods, knocks them out of the middle class and thwarts the aspirations of their kids, wariness will quickly give way to rage." --- nytimes. com/2026/03/05/opinion/ai-jobs-white-collar-apocalpyse.html

X’s feed algorithm “promotes conservative content and demotes posts by traditional media.” See this thread for details:

America is always understood as a hyper-individualist country with a libertarian bent. Here’s how that ethos has totally reversed. Real America loves Big Government now and we should embrace the democratized state as the best means for solving problems. publichappiness.substack.com/p/the-strange-…

Interview on AI and technofascism in @TheInterceptBr intercept.com.br/2026/03/26/ent…

The Vatican was in no mood to play games with the would-be prophet from Palantir and Nigel Farage’s “friend”, Peter Thiel. Paolo Benanti, a priest who has advised Pope Francis and Pope Leo on AI and tech ethics, called out Thiel as a “political theologian operating at the very heart of the Silicon Valley ecosystem” and delivered a scathing rebuke of Thiel’s religious delusions: “Thiel’s entire action can thus be read as a prolonged act of heresy against the liberal consensus: a challenge to the very foundations of civil coexistence, which he now considers outdated.” Benanti hit Thiel where it hurts, zooming in on his persistent efforts to pervert religious ideas into justifications for greed, monopoly, and authoritarianism. He exposes Thiel’s obsessive focus on achieving “the pathological radicalization” of “competition, technology, the individual” to argue against democratic society itself. thenerdreich.com/peter-thiels-a…

Update: I'm told that this bill contains export controls on chips, to prevent them from going to any other country that fails to sign onto safety standards. That's huge and I shift my stance from neutral to positive on the effects of the bill if passed.

11 yrs ago, Martin Ford warned us: This automation is different. Past waves replaced muscle. This one replaces mind, and mind has no refuge. He was early. We weren't ready. The conversation he tried to start in 2015 is well overdue. #TechUnemployment 🎙️ snglrty.co/3ZVGOY7

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vermont) introduced a bill to block the construction of new data centers until lawmakers enact regulations on AI. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-New York) is planning to introduce a similar House bill in the coming weeks. wapo.st/4tbhxGE

(AI) can give every human being on the planet access to a sort of political superintelligence, if we shape it right...can make governments smarter and more effective, representatives more faithful, and institutions more responsive. freesystems.substack.com/p/building-pol…

🎙️ New episode of Prosthetic Gods Ep. 38 – Humanoid Robots What happens when AI doesn’t just speak—but walks into your home? Nir & @citizencyborg explore the ethical risks of humanoid robots.

Sanders on AI: We need to develop a sense of urgency of here. The economic impacts are going to be enormous. The impacts on our children will be enormous, and again, there is literally an existential threat to the existence of the human race.

80% of billionaire political spending goes to one party. Guess which one.

Elon Musk represents the Right’s embrace of a new vision of the future in which technology and progress exist to maintain gender and racial hierarchies. A new book offers a sweeping indictment of this worldview: jacobin.com/2026/03/musk-s…

We don’t need to wait for mass unemployment to justify UBI. We don’t need to wait for AI to be smarter. The justification has existed since the 1970s. Every year we delay is another year the dividend flows upward instead of to all of us. @scottsantens open.substack.com/pub/ieet/p/uni…

Agree or disagree, we need to be discussing Universal Basic Income. It is too important of a subject just to scroll past.

Sen. Bernie Sanders will introduce legislation today to block the construction of new data centers until lawmakers enact regulations on AI, laying down a marker on the populist left as Washington confronts public skepticism of the new technology. wapo.st/4tbhxGE

Jill Lepore examines how the language of constitutionalism has migrated from democratic governance to private A.I. systems, and what it means to entrust machines, and their makers, with the work of moral judgment. newyorkermag.visitlink.me/OwrBOx

@BernieSanders Yes. That. Also we need to tax their wealth and distribute universal basic income and healthcare. And I realize their political spending stands in the way of all of this, but the fact this stuff will be hard just goes to show how important it is to do. scottsantens.com/trickle-down-e…

This week on Prosthetic Gods, Nir and J talk about the distinctive ethical issues raised by the humanoid robots coming to homes and workplaces. Their presence and human-like form elicit unique responses compared to those of non-embodied AI. prostheticgods.podbean.com/e/humanoid-rob…

REUTERS/IPSOS - Trump Approval Approve: 36% (-4) Disapprove: 62% (+4) —— Trump's net approval on key issues 🟤 Immigration: -13 🔴 Foreign policy: -27 (new low) 🔴 Economy: -33 (new low) 🔴 Cost of living: -41 (new low) —— U.S. strikes on Iran Approve: 35% (-2) Disapprove: 61% (+2) —— 3/2/-23 | 1,272 A reuters.com/world/us/trump…