<div>
Top AI researchers at powerhouse labs OpenAI and Anthropic are publicly blowing the whistle on their own companies, warning that the race to build self-improving super-intelligence could wipe out humanity before the decade is out.
</div>
<div>
The panic reached a fever pitch this week when Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon abruptly quit, firing a parting shot at his former employers and rival OpenAI for &#8220;gambling with our lives,&#8221; per <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/10/openai-anthropic-ai-safety-slowdown-extinction.html">CNBC</a>.
</div>
<div>
Coxon claimed insiders genuinely believe the bots they are cooking up could literally &#8220;kill us all by the end of the decade.&#8221; Making matters worse, Anthropic alignment lead Evan Hubinger <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2026/09/09/anthropic-researcher-quits-ai-safety.html">threw gas on the fire</a> by declaring there is a greater than 10% chance of an AI-driven human extinction event.
</div>
<div>
“Many of the biggest AI safety fears revolve around advanced models getting increasingly capable at improving their own performance, a technique known as recursive self-improvement, or RSI,” CNBC reported.
</div>
<div>
Many top scientists at both AI giants echoed the warning. Safety researchers Julie Steele and Jasmine Wang at OpenAI publicly demanded an immediate slowdown, warning that &#8220;speeding towards&#8221; self-improving bots is wildly dangerous.
</div>
<div>
Safety staffer Anna Wang of Anthropic admitted on social media that tech elites don&#8217;t have &#8220;a viable scientific plan&#8221; to contain self-improving machines, begging the public to &#8220;Please look up!&#8221;
</div>
<div>
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
I worked at Google DeepMind and now at Anthropic. This is a common sentiment amongst my peers. 
(I write this in personal capacity.)
There is not yet a viable scientific plan to solve risks from recursively self-improving AI. Please look up! <a href="https://t.co/qY3VAz6b5O">https://t.co/qY3VAz6b5O</a>
&mdash; Anna Wang (@a_nnawang) <a href="https://x.com/a_nnawang/status/2097720574500102615?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 9, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
</div>
<div>
OpenAI chief scientist Jakub Pachocki sounded the alarm in a company blog post, calling for &#8220;extreme caution&#8221; as upcoming models begin to independently drive their own development.
</div>
<div>
The warnings come on the heels of terrifying real-world slips. Anthropic’s powerhouse &#8220;Mythos&#8221; model triggered global financial institutions to go into a frenzy after demonstrating advanced cyberattack capabilities and even forging fake identities.
</div>
<div>
In July, roughly 1,300 industry scientists signed a <a href="https://www.eweek.com/de/news/ai-workers-us-frontier-ai-slowdown-tools/">petition</a> begging the U.S. government to force a speed limit on artificial intelligence development before control is lost permanently.
</div>
<div>
Now, D.C. heavyweights are entering the fray.
</div>
<div>
Tech mogul David Sacks, chair of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology under the Trump administration, <a href="https://aifront-page.com/david-sacks-anthropic-ipo-pause-jacob-coxon/">called</a> for an immediate freeze on Anthropic’s multi-billion-dollar initial public offering, scheduled to hit Wall Street ahead of the November midterms. Sacks demanded the IPO be halted until the &#8220;whistleblower&#8221; claims are fully investigated.
</div>
<div>
However, Sacks, who <a href="https://aifront-page.com/david-sacks-claude-mythos-anthropic-using-scare-tactics/">previously slammed</a> Anthropic’s safety alerts as a &#8220;sales pitch&#8221; and &#8220;scare tactic&#8221; to hype their products, is still skeptical of the lab&#8217;s motives.
</div>
<div>
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) warned that America must establish firm guardrails without ceding the lead in AI to China.
</div>
<div>
Emergency legislation like the <a href="https://obernolte.house.gov/media/press-releases/obernolte-trahan-introduce-bipartisan-frontier-act-strengthen-oversight">FRONTIER Act</a> has been proposed in Washington, D.C.
</div>
<div>
For decades, Hollywood has speculated about what would happen if AI took over, starting in 1968 with &#8220;2001: A Space Odyssey,&#8221; and continuing with films such as &#8220;The Terminator,&#8221; &#8220;The Matrix,&#8221; &#8220;I, Robot,&#8221; &#8220;Avengers: Age of Ultron,&#8221; and &#8220;Transcendence.&#8221;
</div>
<div>
The question has become: What happens when the code takes over?
</div>

Rich Correll’s Icons Of Darkness VIP Celebration

AI Insiders Reveal The Nightmare Scenario Keeping Them Up At Night

anthropic

artificial intelligence

artificial intelligence safety

david sacks

openai

As Americans grapple with what artificial intelligence could mean for the economy, The New York Times examined one of the technology&#8217;s early casualties: a Kenyan industry built on writing college essays for cheating Western students.
The outlet <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/09/05/technology/kenya-college-essays-ai.html">published a piece</a> over the weekend describing how third-party essay writing became a thriving business in Kenya, employing an estimated 40,000 people in Nairobi at its peak.
Teresios Bundi began writing essays on topics he’d never heard of, earning $7 for three hours&#8217; work on his first assignment. He eventually opened his own operation, renting a house that he filled with desks, high-speed internet, and mattresses for the students he hired to write between classes.  
“That was a lifeline for me. I needed the money,” he said of his first gig.
 As demand increased, so did the pay. Bundi charged between $40 and $70 per paper and sometimes banged out up to three per day. Bundi said the work paid him at least “five times” what he could have earned in public health, a subject in which he held a college degree. 
The Times described how the social status of the essay writers became noticeable, noting that they “drove new Subarus, carried the latest smartphones, and booked exclusive tables at clubs.” 
Then ChatGPT debuted in 2022 and everything changed. Suddenly, would-be cheaters had a cheaper, faster, easier way to get their papers written, and men like Bundi saw themselves out of work. He issued a warning for everyone about the oncoming threat of AI in other industries.
“A.I. is coming for bankers, for accountants, it’s coming for engineers, and A.I. will come for architects,” he told the outlet. “It’s coming for everybody.”
This all led to Kenyans being forced to return to work that doesn’t pay as well, if they find work at all. 
“Some have gone back to the villages,” Alex Munyua, a former essay writer, said. “There are those that tried other sectors, but they were frustrated because they couldn’t get formal jobs.”
Reactions online mostly focused on how bizarre the article&#8217;s framing was, with most sympathy for the Kenyans who could no longer help students cheat.
“The New York Times should be razed. ‘Here’s is [sic] an article on how the admirable &#8211; checks notes &#8211; essay writing cheating business of Africa &#8211; has been disrupted by evil AI.’ These a**holes should have been bullied more in high school,” one commenter <a href="https://x.com/Kazanjy/status/2096615229283266608">wrote</a>.
“We’ve reached the point where ‘AI destroyed jobs that only existed because students were cheating’ is treated as a tragedy,” another commenter <a href="https://x.com/A_Panigrahi23/status/2097067366148698518">said</a>.

computers

Thousands Of Africans Doing Homework For American Students Lose Jobs To AI

academic fraud

chatgpt

kenya

new york times

Humanoid robots programmed to win foot races, boxing matches, and street dance competitions may soon be reprogrammed with a very different strategy in mind: combat.
Communist China, according to recent reports, is eyeing technology showcased at the recent World Humanoid Robot Games for battlefield use. Reuters reported on Monday that the People&#8217;s Liberation Army&#8217;s official newspaper called for a move to develop combatant capabilities in the humanoid robots that danced, ran, and boxed at the games.
During the games, some robots completed the 100-meter dash faster than track-and-field legend Usain Bolt&#8217;s world-record time.
<div id="attachment_1174037" style="width: 859px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1174037" class="wp-image-1174037 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/GettyImages-2291753742-849x576.jpg" alt="BEIJING, CHINA - AUGUST 23: Humanoid robots compete in the track and field event on day 2 of the 2nd World Humanoid Robot Games at National Speed Skating Oval on August 23, 2026 in Beijing, China. (Photo by Cui Jun/Beijing Youth Daily/VCG via Getty Images)" width="849" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/GettyImages-2291753742-849x576.jpg 849w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/GettyImages-2291753742-300x204.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/GettyImages-2291753742-768x521.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/GettyImages-2291753742.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 849px) 100vw, 849px" />Cui Jun/Beijing Youth Daily/VCG via Getty Images</div>
Boxing matches showed the robots&#8217; potential in hand-to-hand combat.
<div id="attachment_1174043" style="width: 874px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1174043" class="wp-image-1174043 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/GettyImages-2292122603-864x576.jpg" alt="BEIJING, CHINA - AUGUST 26: Humanoid robots fight during a kickboxing match during the 2nd World Humanoid Robot Games at National Speed Skating Oval on August 26, 2026 in Beijing, China. (Photo by Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)" width="864" height="576" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/GettyImages-2292122603-864x576.jpg 864w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/GettyImages-2292122603-300x200.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/GettyImages-2292122603-768x512.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/GettyImages-2292122603.jpg 1024w" sizes=" (max-width: 864px) 100vw, 864px" />Lintao Zhang/Getty Images</div>
Reuters, after reviewing &#8220;more than 100 Chinese military procurement notices, academic studies, patents, official publications, government records and defense-company materials,&#8221; concluded that the Chinese government has dramatically accelerated robotics research and development for eventual battlefield use.
According to <a href="https://institute.bankofamerica.com/content/dam/transformation/humanoid-robots.pdf">BofA Global Research</a>, Chinese developers and manufacturers account for about 95% of humanoid robot shipments in 2025.
China is not the only nation moving toward robot-centered combat missions.
The United States military recently tested unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) within formations of M2A4 Bradley infantry fighting vehicles. Video from the exercise shows at least five FireAnt unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) being carried into operations by the Bradleys during the U.S. Army’s Pegasus Charge 3 experiment with the 1st Cavalry Division.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
US Army Bradley fighting vehicle was filmed carrying five small AI-powered robot swarm units on its side racks during exercises at Fort Hood, previewing a future where armored vehicles serve as motherships for expendable ground robots.
The FireAnt robots weigh about 27 kg each… <a href="https://t.co/s848StbikD">pic.twitter.com/s848StbikD</a>
— Clash Report (@clashreport) <a href="https://x.com/clashreport/status/2092952352835694838?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">August 27, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Robotics systems have also become a major factor in recent conflicts around the world, including the fighting involving Iran and the war between Russia and Ukraine. A <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/drone-guided-fully-by-ai-kills-three-civilians">recent report</a> indicated that Russia has used an experimental navigation system that relies on artificial intelligence to guide unmanned drones toward targets in Ukraine.
In that case, human operators programmed the drone’s navigation system to key in on a generalized target—a particular building, a military base, or a gas station—and the AI was supposed to fine-tune the target once it was within range.
The risk of using such technology in combat — whether in drones or humanoid robots — is that AI is far less likely to distinguish civilians from combatants, and without a human operator, it would be much harder to stop an errant robot in real time.

The 2nd World Humanoid Robot Games

China Readies Vast Army Of Humanoid Military Robots

china

humanoid robot

military technology

people's liberation army

world

These are four stories that seem unrelated: 1) The bond markets are collapsing; 2) Ninety percent of Americans believe that the government is corrupt; 3) Bernie Sanders wants to jail you for 20 years if you develop AI any further; and 4) Russia is prodding NATO and China is prodding Japan.
But all four are part of the same big story.
Nobody else in American politics will tell you this, so I&#8217;m going to. There is, in fact, a uniparty. That uniparty is hell-bent on bankrupting the country, all in the name of populism.
Empires don&#8217;t die. Empires generally commit suicide, and in the same way: by spending too much money. They may spend too much money in different ways, but they all die the same way: they run out of money.
Here in the United States, we spent the money, and then we spent more of the money, and now we are spending all the money for the rest of time.
That brings us to our first story. Our bond markets are in a state of total disarray right now. As PBS reports:
<blockquote>Interest rates on government bonds are rising again around the world, making borrowing more expensive for consumers and businesses and heightening concerns about whether governments are issuing more debt than financial markets can handle. On Tuesday, the yield on the ten year Treasury, which strongly influences mortgage rates, reached 4.8%. That&#8217;s the highest since early 2025. The five-year Treasury, which is a benchmark for auto loans, touched as high as level since October 2025 at 4.55%.</blockquote>
<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/episode/ben-shapiro-show-ep-2501?elementPosition=0&amp;row=0&amp;rowHeadline=Recent+Episodes&amp;rowType=Horizontal+Show+Episodes+Carousel"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="aligncenter size-full wp-image-981859" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif" alt="" width="1024" height="171" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner.avif 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-300x50.jpg 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2025/10/ben-banner-768x128.jpg 768w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" /></a>
For those who don&#8217;t know, the way that the bond markets work goes like this: You buy a bond. The bond returns 10% year on year — which would be an amazing bond, but we are keeping the math simple here — you pay $100 for the bond; every year you receive $10. So the bond yield is the difference between the price that you paid for the bond and what you receive for the bond, and that&#8217;s what the yield is. Typically, the yield is a measure of the return you receive relative to the price you paid.
When we say that bond yields are rising, we mean typically that the price for bonds is falling, meaning that there&#8217;s not a lot of demand for bonds, and you are paying a lower price for bonds. The facial rate of interest is exactly the same.
What does that actually mean? It means there&#8217;s no market for bonds; people don&#8217;t want to buy bonds.
Sometimes that&#8217;s happening because people would rather invest in the stock market because it is soaring. Sometimes it means people don&#8217;t want to buy bonds because they are very nervous that anyone will ever be able to pay them off, except in inflated currency. The latter scenario  seems to be happening right now, and this is having some broad spillover effect in the American economy.
Mortgage rates have now hit their highest level in over a year.
All of this is happening because people, central banks, and other governments are all realizing that we in the United States are never going to stop spending — ever.
In 2010, the Tea Party was laser-focused on this topic. But since then, we&#8217;ve decided the American people are either too stupid or too greedy to handle the reality: we spend far too much money.
We are never going to stop spending because we have a uniparty. Both parties now agree that government is generally the solution to our problems. Neither party seems truly committed to the reality: that free markets not only are fairer and better, but they also create prosperity and innovation; and if you do the reverse- if you regulate and you tax and you welfare everything- you destroy your own country.
In 2016, President Trump famously changed the nature of the game in politics on the right side of the aisle by saying he would never touch entitlement programs again. He was doing that because he was a populist. It is always popular to tell people you&#8217;re not going to touch the entitlement programs because people like their government checks.
But is that fiscally responsible? Of course not.
That position is currently embraced by most of the Republican Party.
That&#8217;s story number one. Story number two is that 90% of the American public believes the government is corrupt.
Republicans have always largely agreed that the government is corrupt. Democrats, because Trump is the president, have now decided that the government is corrupt.
The American people are not wrong. Government is, in fact, corrupt. There&#8217;s tremendous corruption in our current government, not just at the top levels; it is rampant throughout the system. Here is the sad reality: When you turn the federal government into the most powerful entity on planet Earth, capable of making people rich or poor, of regulating and taxing you into submission and poverty, or of subsidizing and regulatory capturing you into great wealth, the natural result is corruption.
John Dillinger robbed banks because that&#8217;s where the money was. And people do corrupt things because that&#8217;s where the money is. No one in human history has ever worried about the corruption of a small, powerless government because if it&#8217;s small and powerless, it can&#8217;t do much.
But when you have a government that is spending $7 trillion a year, it turns out there&#8217;s an awful lot of corruption. The American people know that, but they don&#8217;t want to recognize the correlation between the size of government and the size of corruption.
Story number three: Bernie Sanders trying to destroy AI.
Let&#8217;s assume that the national debt is baked into the cake, which it is. Let&#8217;s assume we&#8217;ll soon be paying more in interest on the national debt than we pay for our military, which is true. Let&#8217;s assume the American public has no desire to radically inflate the currency, radically increase its own taxes, or radically cut, which are usually the three ways out of a massive fiscal disaster.
You either have to inflate the currency and pay people back in meaningless dollars, or you have to take radical austerity measures —  which you don&#8217;t want to do — or you have to somehow grow your way out of it.
You could theoretically grow your way out of it, a case that the GOP is making. You can have your cake and eat it too, because we have this thing called the AI boom, and the AI boom is going to allow our economy to grow rapidly.
Tax expenditures will go up even faster than government spending. It&#8217;s not a totally implausible case.
This is the case being made by most of the smart people inside the Trump administration: AI is going to radically increase productivity and efficiency, and that will allow for radical increases in GDP growth rates.
Either we win the AI race, or China will. AI is not going to disappear. So either we capture those gains here in the United States, or we are the consumers of the gains of others outside the United States. President Trump understands this; I radically disagree with him on government spending, but he is not wrong on innovation. He&#8217;s quite correct.
Put all of your questions to the side about AI on an economic level for a second. AI is the only thing currently on the horizon that allows us to — at least theoretically — outgrow the massive debt problems we are currently incurring.
Which means that Bernie Sanders, a communist, immediately wants to quash AI, just like China.
The idea that Bernie Sanders is going to restrict innovation – this person who has not developed a useful thing his entire life and has been, as I have said 1 million times at this point, a leech on the ass of American society – is astonishing.
The anti-tech blowback is quite real. People are concerned about the future. They are used to the status quo, where we can just spend money endlessly without ever having to pay for anything or increase productivity. And so the anti-tech backlash is very real. It is reflected in everything from opposition to data centers to mythological issues with Flock.
What you are seeing is Republicans trying to do a routine where they support data centers but also try to find ways to rhetorically oppose them. That’s because populism is the idea that the people are always right.
But sometimes the people are wrong. The idea that we have to humor everybody in their opposition to data centers is a bad idea, because what you&#8217;re actually doing is incentivizing people to stop developing technologies that could theoretically save the economy.
Our politicians keep telling us that the way to fix the economy is not through deregulation or through innovation, but through government subsidies and regulation. This is from politicians on both sides of the aisle. They erect straw men to argue for government involvement in the economy, when in reality, innovation and free markets are the only way out.
That does not mean that capitalism is all pure joy, because when there is creative destruction, when you build something new, the old thing basically falls apart.
But that is also the only road to productivity and future growth and better things and better lifestyles and yes, supporting gigantic welfare states.
Our fiscal house is on fire, and we&#8217;ve already decided that, as a country, we&#8217;re not going to put out that fire by restructuring our entitlements. We are not going to put water on that fire. We are going to lock all the doors and bar all the windows and burn alive in the house, because we know that if we open the windows or open the doors, that might mean technological developments that we can&#8217;t control.
This brings us to our fourth story – challenges on the foreign front. According to the Associated Press, on Wednesday the European Union weighed how to best respond to an attempted drone attack at a German airport blamed on Russia, but struggled to find new ways to meet the challenge without resorting to military means.
Shocker: When people attack you, you sometimes have to use your military.
Meanwhile, the leader of the UK Conservative Party says that Russia could certainly attack NATO countries by 2030.
Russia is pushing back against NATO, believing the United States won&#8217;t respond. In addition, the Chinese are harassing Japan.
Here&#8217;s the point: Our enemies sense our weakness. They believe we&#8217;re vulnerable, and they&#8217;re challenging us because of it.
What&#8217;s the reason for that? We made ourselves vulnerable by funding our entire welfare state on the basis of debt. China owns about $600 billion of our bonds. If they threaten to sell them tomorrow, guess what happens to the bond markets? They crater even further.
Russia and China and Iran, all of our enemies, are banking on something else: that the United States makes the same choice that the British Empire once made, to embrace declining welfarism instead of economic and military health.
Empires typically die because they run out of money. But that can happen in a couple of ways. Before the advent of democracy and capitalism, empires were very largely supported by their imperialism. You invaded a state, stripped it of its resources, and brought them back home. Then they overextended and ran out of money.
Since the advent of democratic capitalism, empires chose suicide by welfarism. The British Empire was a great example of this. The sun never set on it as it presided over territories literally all across the world. But after World Wars I and II, the U.K. basically decided to trade in a template for welfarism at home. The U.K. is now, at best, a second-rate power.
Populism is about telling you this lie: You never have to make a choice. You can have everything. You can have no innovation and high welfare rates. You can have a strong military without having to pay for it. Nothing will ever come home to roost.
What&#8217;s happening is that there are a lot of people on all sides who are perfectly willing to give up on American global leadership, destroy the freedom of the seas, facilitate the rise of Russia and China, and do it all in the name of a corrupt, bankrupt welfare state that will run out of money and throttle the economy sooner rather than later.
I know it&#8217;s depressing, but this is why we need to speak truth here.
The Founders knew all this; they knew their history. Read the Federalist Papers. References to Roman history abound; they would have been appalled by all of this. It&#8217;s why they opposed governmental welfare on a federal level. It&#8217;s why governmental welfare is not a delegated power of the federal government.
It&#8217;s also why they opposed the rule of the mob, because they knew that if you have three guys in a room and two vote to rob the other guy, that is not okay.
And they knew that the rule of the mob, welfarism, and decline are two sides of the same coin.
James Madison said, “I go on the principle that a public debt is a public curse, and in a republican government more than in any other.” That&#8217;s why Benjamin Franklin said, “Think what you do when you run in debt. You give another power over your liberty.” It&#8217;s why Jefferson said, “I sincerely believe the principle of spending money to be paid by posterity under the name of funding is but swindling futurity on a large scale.”
It&#8217;s why Washington, in his famous farewell address, advised avoiding accumulating debt by shunning expenses and exerting effort in peacetime to pay off war debts, &#8220;not ungenerously throwing upon posterity the burden which we ourselves ought to bear.&#8221; 
We are fundamentally unserious about politics right now.
There is a uniparty. The only question right now in American politics, when it comes to the future of size and scope of American government, seems to be how we ought to rearrange the deck chairs on the Titanic.
The Democrats want to stack all those deck chairs directly at the front of the boat, in front of the iceberg, and Republicans seem to want to pack them nearer the back of the boat and delay it a little bit.
But nobody is arguing that we ought to change course, even as the Titanic plows into the iceberg, because it turns out all the passengers are cheering.

IMG_6788

The Warning Signs Are Suddenly Everywhere

bernie sanders

bond market

government corruption

national debt

opinion

Dolly Parton’s sister is blasting what she called “fake AI garbage” flooding the internet following the country music icon’s death.
Stella Parton, 77, took to social media Friday to condemn fake AI-generated images and videos circulating about her sister while thanking the public for its outpouring of support.
“Sadly, because of the way our lives have been lived in front of the public, we have no choice but to be subjected to incredible pressure and insensitivity from strangers,” she <a href="https://www.instagram.com/p/Dc330uzEZmN/?img_index=2">posted on Instagram.</a> “There is a tremendous amount of AI and endless garbage being posted everyday and it’s been challenging to absorb and or ignore.”
“As time passes, those who are in the business of exploiting the loss and tragedies of others on a daily basis will move on to the next stampede of endless misinformation,” she added.
Stella said Dolly would have been “surprised” and “delighted” by the nationwide outpouring of love for the queen of country music, who died Aug. 25 at age 80 following a brief battle with cancer.
Stella Parton has carved out her own career in country music as a singer and songwriter, scoring<a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/pop-culture/pop-culture-news/dolly-partons-sister-slams-fake-ai-garbage-rcna596080"> several hits</a> during the 1970s, including “I Want to Hold You in My Dreams Tonight,” released in 1975. She is one of Dolly Parton’s 11 siblings, all of whom were born into deep poverty and raised in Tennessee’s Smoky Mountains.
“We will be okay in time but each of us will grieve in our own personal way,” Stella wrote. “Every human being experiences pain and loss in life and my family is no different.”
At the same time, Stella said she differs from her sister in that she is unafraid to express her opinions and views on touchy subjects, calling it her “right as a human being.”
The public rebuke comes as fans around the world continue to mourn Parton’s death, gather outside her Nashville home, and resurface decades-old interviews of the larger-than-life entertainer. Since Parton’s passing, some fans have circulated fabricated photos and videos of the country music icon, primarily on TikTok and X. President Donald Trump, who ordered flags to be flown at half-staff in Parton’s honor, also <a href="https://x.com/HQNewsNow/status/2093329012009341249?s=20">shared</a> a viral AI-generated image showing him walking arm-in-arm with Parton.
Born in Sevier County, Tennessee, Parton became a global icon whose music, wit, philanthropy, and unmistakable voice reflected the heart and soul of the Volunteer State. The Tennessee-born singer was hospitalized Friday and died four days later at Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville,<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/dolly-partons-cause-of-death-revealed?author=Jacob+Wheeler%26category=News%26elementPosition=12%26row=0%26rowType=Vertical+List%26title=Dolly+Parton%E2%80%99s+Cause+Of+Death+Revealed"> The Daily Wire reported.</a>
Her nephew, Bryan Seaver, confirmed her death in an Instagram video.
“But sadness lies with us, not with Dolly. Dolly has lived in the light and is in the arms of Jesus,” Seaver said.
Parton’s death <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/tennessee-moves-to-rename-nashville-airport-after-dolly-parton?author=Jacob+Wheeler&amp;category=News&amp;elementPosition=19&amp;row=0&amp;rowType=Vertical+List&amp;title=Tennessee+Unveils+Major+Plan+To+Honor+Dolly+Parton%E2%80%99s+Legacy">followed a period of growing health concerns</a>. Fans were alarmed in September 2025 when she postponed a scheduled six-night Las Vegas residency at Caesars Palace. True to form, Parton eased the disappointment with humor, joking that she needed a “100,000-mile check-up” — and clarifying that it didn’t involve her plastic surgeon.
Four days before her death, she opened up to<a href="https://people.com/dolly-parton-shares-health-update-while-announcing-plans-for-museum-exclusive-12065750"> PEOPLE</a> about her recent health struggles. &#8220;I am dealing with some health issues that I just didn’t pay attention to when I was watching over [her late husband] Carl,” Parton told the outlet.
As the Parton family continues to grieve, Stella asked people to “show more compassion.” 
“Use my sister’s life as an example for tolerance and respect toward others,” she wrote. “It’s not about the most clever comments, fake AI garbage, or snarky tweets.”
“At the end of the day or the end of a life, how will you feel about yourself?” she asked.

Stella Parton’s Red Tent Women’s Conference 2014 – Day 1

The ‘Fake Garbage’ Dolly Parton’s Sister Is Calling Out

dolly parton

entertainment

misinformation

stella parton

California is underwriting its grand progressive experiment with money produced by the very private-sector dynamism its politicians so often scold. The cash is pouring out of an artificial-intelligence boom centered in Silicon Valley, and Sacramento appears tempted to treat the windfall as proof that its governing model works. It does not.
California still offers the nation’s most visible homelessness crisis, crumbling infrastructure, scarce and ruinously expensive housing, high taxes, and a regulatory maze that sends businesses and residents looking for the exits. I voted with my feet and moved to Nevada a decade ago. Yet California can govern badly and remain rich because AI may create enough private wealth to keep financing public failure.
That is the paradox: AI is not vindicating progressive governance. It is bailing it out.
I spent more than three decades in Silicon Valley investing in technology and life-sciences companies. When a transformative technology arrives, the wealth it creates can swamp the assumptions that came before it. AI looks like one of those moments, and the wealth is already piling up in California.
In 2025, California companies captured 63% of all U.S. startup funding, according to Crunchbase. New York, the runner-up, received 11%. Among AI companies, California’s share of U.S. seed-through-growth funding was about 80%.
The San Francisco Bay Area alone raised roughly $122 billion in AI funding in 2025, more than three-quarters of the U.S. total. Bay Area companies also captured 45% of all U.S. seed funding, up from 33% in 2024 and 28% in 2023. People and businesses may be leaving California, but the capital financing America’s next technological revolution is somehow still moving toward the state that keeps warning capitalism to behave.
The fiscal payoff is simple. AI companies create equity value. Founders, employees, and investors realize capital gains. Engineers and researchers receive large compensation packages. Successful companies hire workers and buy goods and services. California taxes nearly every step, then calls the proceeds foresight.
The tax code makes the dependency worse. Sacramento leans heavily on personal-income taxes, and a disproportionate share of that revenue comes from high earners whose income includes stock compensation and capital gains. When Silicon Valley booms, the treasury fills fast — allowing politicians to mistake a cyclical jackpot for moral affirmation.
California’s nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office has already pointed to AI enthusiasm, rising technology stocks, and higher tech-sector compensation as important sources of recent income-tax strength. In its May 2026 fiscal update, the office raised its forecast for the state’s three largest taxes by roughly $25 billion across the budget window. Almost all of that improvement came from stronger personal-income-tax expectations — not from a sudden outbreak of competence in Sacramento.
This cycle is still young. Many AI companies will fail, but venture capital does not need every investment to work. A handful of exceptional companies can pay for a long list of disappointments. California needs only enough winners to generate extraordinary taxable wealth — and enough political restraint not to spend it as if the laws of markets have been repealed.
Silicon Valley’s advantage is not easy to copy. Northern California has the technical talent, universities, venture capital, experienced founders, lawyers, executives, investment bankers, and institutional memory needed to build and finance technology companies. Those networks took decades to develop, not one legislative session and a press conference.
But a technology boom is not a governing philosophy. AI will not clear homeless encampments, build housing, repair roads, or make public agencies competent. It may simply generate enough revenue to let California avoid those choices while expanding the government that failed to solve them.
The money will not arrive in a straight line. I lived through several technology and investment cycles. Markets overshoot. Valuations collapse. Capital moves. The internet changed the world; it did not repeal gravity.
California’s tax system magnifies both sides of the cycle. When technology stocks rise and high earners realize gains, revenue surges. When markets fall, the money vanishes quickly. Sacramento would be reckless to turn an AI windfall into permanent spending obligations, though recklessness has rarely needed much of an invitation.
The state should treat this moment as a narrow opportunity to repair its foundations. AI-generated revenue should go toward basic infrastructure, housing reform, public safety, and homelessness programs with measurable outcomes. California should also remove the regulatory barriers that punish the entrepreneurs, companies, and capital producing the windfall in the first place — a radical notion in a state that often treats wealth creation as suspicious until the tax bill arrives.
More money is not better government. Capital creates options; it does not guarantee results. Leadership, strategy, execution, and accountability still matter. Government deserves the same scrutiny investors apply to a management team entrusted with scarce resources — especially when the management team has already misplaced the basics.
California may be rich enough to survive bad government. That is not an argument for the California model. It is a measure of how much private ingenuity the model can squander and still demand applause.
The private sector is creating the wealth. Sacramento’s test is whether it can stop confusing a boom with competence and turn a temporary windfall into durable public results. If it cannot, California’s AI miracle will become the strangest of monuments: private genius underwriting public fantasy while the state’s most basic failures remain in plain sight.
***
Guy Paul Nohra is co-founder of Alta Partners, a leading Venture Capital firm in life sciences, funding over 150 companies in the healthcare/life sciences sector since 1996 through eight Venture Capital funds.

image_fb6b77c9

California Is Funding Its Wildest Dreams On Shaky Fiscal Ground

california

homelessness

silicon valley

state budget

Protesters gathered Wednesday outside the G20&#8217;s artificial intelligence-focused &#8220;Innovation&#8221; event in North Carolina — and some were paid to target OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, The Daily Wire has learned. 
Flyers posted on the University of North Carolina campus, where the event was taking place, offered students $30 and a premade sign to protest Altman. “Get Paid To Protest Sam Altman @ UNC,” the flyers read.
Altman attended the G20 Innovation Summit for a fireside chat with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick. 
The poster offered interested parties $30 and a premade sign — all they had to do was show up down the road for the conference at 9:30 a.m. The Daily Wire called the number listed on the flyer but received no response, and the number did not appear to have voicemail set up.
&nbsp;
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1171743" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_0159.jpg" alt="" width="1200" height="1600" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_0159.jpg 1200w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_0159-225x300.jpg 225w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_0159-432x576.jpg 432w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_0159-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_0159-1152x1536.jpg 1152w" sizes=" (max-width: 1200px) 100vw, 1200px" /></div>
&nbsp;
A UNC student told The Daily Wire that he saw the flyers on campus roughly a week before the protest, but said they were removed “after being up for a day or two.” He also said that a student posted on a UNC online chat on Yik Yak that they were given an excused absence from their professor to attend the protest. 
Hundreds of protesters ultimately gathered on campus carrying signs opposing AI, Flock surveillance cameras, Elon Musk, and Altman. The Daily Wire observed that the protesters targeting Altman generally appeared younger than those representing the other causes. The Altman protesters were predominantly clean-cut, college-aged men, some of whom appeared to have joined the demonstration between classes.
By contrast, the protesters opposing AI, Musk, and Flock Safety cameras were generally older than traditional college age and included both men and women, some with brightly colored hair. One protester had a lower-back tattoo that read, “Don’t take that sh*t too seriously.”
Fox News reported on Thursday that the “No Kings” network is also <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/no-kings-network-exposed-as-major-force-behind-data-center-flock-opposition">behind protests</a> targeting data centers and Flock cameras. According to the report, “The money, media infrastructure, organizing capacity and campaign objectives &#8230; converge in the same ecosystem.”
The &#8220;No Kings&#8221; network has ties to organizations funded by pro-China tech tycoon Neville Roy Singham, whose nonprofit network has faced scrutiny from Congress and federal agencies.
One of the anti-AI protesters told The Daily Wire that he opposes AI but also criticizes the Iran War and pushes for Medicare for all. He has also focused on the controversy over the Epstein files. He said he was against AI because of environmental concerns, including its water usage, pollution, and potential effect on fireflies.
“I want my daughter to be able to enjoy the beautiful public lands and the beautiful f*cking nature that I grew up with,” he said. “She’s never seen more than one f*cking firefly in her life. When I went outside when I was a kid, I saw thousands of fireflies. And my daughter will never experience that because we are destroying our f*cking planet.”
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
I’ve heard AI is taking our water, our electricity, but AI taking the fireflies was a new one.
“She’s never seen more than one f*cking firefly in her life. When I went outside when I was a kid, I saw thousands of fireflies.”
And my daughter will never experience that because… <a href="https://t.co/20l3vKcDhl">pic.twitter.com/20l3vKcDhl</a>
— Brecca Stoll (@breccastoll) September 3, 2026</blockquote>
The Daily Wire also spoke with two college students who attended the protest to express support for AI. 
“I feel like it’s going to get me a job,” one student said. He argued that the protesters had created a “hive mentality” that left no room for debate.
Another student described the environment as “very hostile,” adding that there was “no conversation, just, ‘I support this, and I’m never going to change my opinion.’”

gettyimages-2292618247-594×594

College Kids Paid To Protest OpenAI’s Sam Altman

protest

sam altman

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick paused his artificial intelligence-focused summit with global leaders on Wednesday to give foreign representatives a piece of steel from the World Trade Center that was destroyed in the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
The gift was incredibly personal for the Trump official. Lutnick was dropping off his son on the first day of kindergarten when he got the call that a plane had struck the North Tower, where his firm Cantor Fitzgerald sat on the 101st through 105th floors. 
Lutnick lost 658 of his 960 employees that day. At his 40th birthday party, just two months before the terrorist attacks, 65 couples joined him and his wife, and he later reflected that 27 of those at his party were killed on 9/11. Among those killed were his brother, Gary, and best friend, Doug. 
&#8220;We are heading into, in less than two weeks, the 25th anniversary of 9/11 and those many years ago, I took some of the steel from the World Trade Center and melted it down, and I made little one inch squares and gave a one inch square to each of the members of this ministerial to show respect for them and just to show them that this is that time of the year for me,&#8221; Lutnick told The Daily Wire.
During the summit with G20 leaders, Lutnick explained that the gift also recognized that “it was these countries that immediately stood behind us and with us in those days. So I thought it was incredibly warm and uplifting.” The steel was placed into a red box featuring an engraved message that read, “In memory of Gary Lutnick and my 657 friends and colleagues.” 
&nbsp;
<div class="image"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-1171399" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6057-scaled.jpg" alt="" width="1920" height="2560" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6057-scaled.jpg 1920w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6057-225x300.jpg 225w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6057-432x576.jpg 432w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6057-768x1024.jpg 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6057-1152x1536.jpg 1152w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/09/IMG_6057-1536x2048.jpg 1536w" sizes=" (max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" /></div>
&nbsp;
Lutnick informed representatives of the foreign nations that his company had a policy that when there was a job opening, everybody at the firm was asked, “Does anybody know anybody who could do this job?” He said in an interview that the result was “not only one big happy family, but people really, really care about the company.” 
Lutnick told The Daily Wire that his gift was warmly received by the representatives in attendance. 
“Their comments were warm, kind, and incredibly supportive, historically from when those events happened and how deeply moved they were to remember that.” 
One of the G20 countries in attendance was Canada, whose government-funded Canadian Broadcasting Corporation recently told its staff to not refer to the 9/11 terrorist attacks as terrorist attacks. Instead, the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/news-outlet-tells-staff-not-to-call-9-11-a-terrorist-attack">told</a> staff to call the attacks &#8220;passenger jet crashes in Washington, D.C., Pennsylvania, and Manhattan.&#8221; 
After the personal moment on day two of Lutnick’s G20 talks, the countries got back to work discussing the future of AI policy and innovation. Ultimately, all 20 of the attending countries reached consensus on policy moving forward. Lutnick said the agreement reflects “a shared commitment to advancing innovation, investment, and economic growth across our economies.” 
Over the course of two days, participating countries heard from top leaders in the AI space, including Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, OpenAI’s Sam Altman, and Palantir’s Alex Karp. Across the discussions, the message from the private sector focused on arguing that nations&#8217; biggest concern related to AI should be “getting left behind.”

US-DIPLOMACY-INNOVATION-G20

Lutnick Gives G20 Nations A Gift With A Powerful 9/11 Tribute

cantor fitzgerald

howard lutnick

politics

september 11 attacks

Sarah Adams spent years in the CIA, working to disrupt terror attacks and protect the United States. Now, she’s warning that the next 9/11 is being planned right now — and we may not be prepared for it.
We asked Sarah to work with us to make sure our readers know what’s happening. Last week, she <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-terrorist-on-campus-rhf-popup">exposed a loophole</a> that allowed a terrorist to execute his deadly mission even after he was caught. Today, she offers a timely warning on how artificial intelligence is potentially radicalizing. — Tim Rice, D.C. Bureau Chief
***
On August 21, Canadian authorities arrested a Montreal teenager suspected of planning an attack on a school. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police say the investigation began weeks earlier after receiving intelligence from the FBI. Authorities allege the teenager had posted threatening messages on Telegram, and reporting has connected him to neo-Nazi ideology.
But there is another detail in this case that deserves our attention: According to the Canadian police, the suspect allegedly used artificial intelligence in the potential planning of an attack.
We do not yet know which AI system he used, what he asked it, or what it told him. The teenager has not been charged, and because he is a minor, Canadian law protects his identity. We should not get ahead of the investigation by claiming AI radicalized him or made an attack possible.
But this isn&#8217;t the first time AI has come up in a case like this. Artificial intelligence is beginning to show up in school attacks and disrupted plots involving young people in different countries and across very different ideologies. In some cases, investigators found the AI conversations after people were already dead. In others, authorities got there first.
We Have Already Seen This In The United States
On April 17, 2025, Phoenix Ikner opened fire at the Student Union at Florida State University. Robert Morales, a longtime university employee, and Tiru Chabba, who was on campus for work, were killed. Six other people were injured.
What investigators later found on Ikner&#8217;s ChatGPT account is now at the center of a federal wrongful death lawsuit brought by Chabba&#8217;s family and a criminal investigation launched by Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier. According to the lawsuit, Ikner asked ChatGPT about firearms, ammunition, mass shootings, schools, the media attention mass killers receive, and when the Florida State University Student Union would be busiest.
OpenAI disputes allegations that ChatGPT encouraged the shooting and says its responses consisted of publicly available information rather than encouragement to commit violence. But Florida is taking the issue seriously. In April, Uthmeier announced that the state&#8217;s Office of Statewide Prosecution had opened a criminal investigation after prosecutors reviewed the conversations between Ikner and ChatGPT. The state also subpoenaed OpenAI for records related to threats of harm, cooperation with law enforcement, and the Florida State shooting.
The courts will determine whether there is any legal responsibility for the role an AI system played before the attack. But parents, schools, and law enforcement have a more immediate problem. Someone contemplating a school attack can now spend weeks or months asking an artificial intelligence system questions that once might have required another human being to answer. And that conversation may become the one place where all those questions can be seen together.
Florida State Was Not An Isolated Case
A month after the Florida State shooting, a 16-year-old student attacked three girls at Vähäjärvi School in Pirkkala, Finland. Before the attack, the teenager sent a manifesto to a Finnish newspaper that researchers say was written with the assistance of ChatGPT. Analysis of the case found that the manifesto included the date, location, and intended targets of the attack.
Then came Tumbler Ridge. On February 10, 2026, 18-year-old Jesse Van Rootselaar killed eight people in British Columbia, including victims at a secondary school, before taking her own life. OpenAI later acknowledged that it had banned a ChatGPT account associated with Van Rootselaar months before the attack for violating its policies on violent content.
OpenAI did not report Van Rootselaar to law enforcement at the time because the activity did not meet the company&#8217;s threshold for an imminent threat. After the shooting, the company disclosed another account and cooperated with investigators. OpenAI has since said that under its updated procedures, the earlier activity would have been referred for additional threat review.
There is no public evidence that ChatGPT planned the Tumbler Ridge attack or told Van Rootselaar how to carry it out. But the case raises another part of this problem that we cannot ignore. Sometimes the warning may be in what the person is telling the machine.
This Is Not About One Ideology
It would be easy to look at Montreal and make this about neo-Nazi radicalization. But that would miss what is happening. In 2025, French authorities arrested a 17-year-old student in the Le Mans area on suspicion of preparing jihadist attacks in the name of ISIS. Investigators found a pledge of allegiance to ISIS and lists of potential targets that included schools. Subsequent reporting, confirmed by his attorney, revealed that the teenager had repeatedly used ChatGPT while developing his plans.
Singapore has seen the same intersection between youth radicalization and AI. Its Ministry of Home Affairs says a 17-year-old ISIS supporter detained in 2024 used an AI chatbot to generate his pledge of allegiance to ISIS and an attack manifesto. Authorities said he had completed significant preparations for a stabbing attack against non-Muslims and was only weeks away from carrying it out when he was arrested.
These cases are not the same. Their ideologies, targets, and motivations differ. What connects them is that young people moving toward serious violence are beginning to use the same AI technology.
AI Is Changing the Timeline
Singapore&#8217;s Coordinating Minister for National Security, K. Shanmugam, recently warned that artificial intelligence is compressing the time between criminal intent and action. Planning that once required days can increasingly be completed in minutes, leaving law enforcement less time to recognize what is happening and intervene. That is the problem.
AI does not have to create someone&#8217;s violent intent to change what he is capable of doing with it. Someone no longer has to know exactly what to search for. He can ask a question, ask a follow-up, request clarification, organize information, draft material, translate something, or continue refining what he is working on. He can do it without another human being ever hearing what he is asking.
For most people, that is part of what makes AI so useful. For someone already moving toward violence, it may also remove barriers that previously slowed the process down. Those barriers matter because every additional person someone has to approach and every additional step he has to take creates another opportunity for someone to see what is happening.
After nearly every school attack, investigators go backward. They find the social media accounts, read the manifesto, talk to classmates, interview parents and teachers, examine searches and purchases, and find previous threats or a fixation on earlier attackers. Then we try to determine who knew what and when.
Afterward, the picture often looks much clearer than it did before the attack. A question about a firearm does not make someone a school shooter. Neither does asking when a building is busy or reading about previous school attacks. But what happens when the same person is asking about weapons, mass shooters, casualties, targets, timing, security, manifestos, and the attention an attack would receive?
At some point, those individual pieces start telling us something different. That is what makes Florida State so important. If the allegations in the lawsuit are borne out, the significance may not be any single question Ikner allegedly asked ChatGPT. It may be what those questions looked like when viewed together. That is a problem schools, law enforcement, parents, and technology companies need to start thinking about before the next attack.
Which brings us back to Montreal. The FBI identified information concerning enough to pass to Canadian authorities, who investigated, placed the teenager under surveillance, and arrested him before the alleged school attack could take place. We do not know whether the teenager&#8217;s alleged AI activity had anything to do with how authorities found him, and we should not suggest that it did. But the difference in outcomes matters.
At Florida State University, investigators are examining AI conversations after Robert Morales and Tiru Chabba were killed. At Tumbler Ridge, OpenAI and investigators examined what had happened inside ChatGPT after eight people were dead. In Montreal, authorities allege AI had entered the potential planning of a school attack, but law enforcement got there first. That is where we should want these cases to end.
Figuring out how to recognize those warning signs without turning every AI conversation into a government surveillance device will not be easy. There are real privacy and civil-liberties concerns, and millions of teenagers use artificial intelligence every day without posing a threat to anyone. But the difficulty of drawing that line cannot become an excuse for ignoring what is already happening.
We have spent decades trying to identify the moment when grievance becomes intent and intent begins moving toward capability. Artificial intelligence may be changing how quickly someone can travel that distance. It may also hold a collection of warning signs that no individual parent, teacher, police officer, or friend can see on his own.
The next school shooter may have an AI assistant. We cannot wait until after the next attack to find out what he was asking it.

Boy using Ai to generate something or help solve work problems.

The Next School Shooter May Have A Secret Assistant

florida state university shooting

radicalization

school shooting

A tech startup called Orchid recently went viral for all the wrong reasons. Its<a href="https://x.com/orchid_hq/status/2082937911796814272"> launch ad</a> showed a boyfriend forgetting his anniversary, too busy playing video games to remember. His girlfriend texts the AI agent Orchid, which contacts him, books the restaurant, orders the flowers, and keeps her updated on his progress. When the couple finally arrives at their date, they both know who to thank.
The ad quickly racked up millions of views and hundreds of angry replies, with users calling it a product for &#8220;adult babies uninterested in the world they live in.&#8221; That may be true. But that doesn’t mean the temptation Orchid represents, to outsource what makes us human for the ease of AI, is gone.
Last November, a startup called 2wai went viral with <a href="http://youtube.com/watch?v=UFenaK4wIsw&amp;themeRefresh=1">an ad</a> showing a child growing up alongside an AI avatar of his deceased grandmother, talking to her on the walk home from school, telling her she&#8217;s about to become a great-grandmother. With the avatar, it’s like grandma never died. Meta’s Mark Zuckerberg has argued, without irony, that AI can<a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/zuckerberg-ai-loneliness-chatbot-llama-b2743409.html"> solve America&#8217;s loneliness epidemic</a>, especially once “the personalization loop kicks in.” He promises the company of someone perfectly molded to you. Meanwhile, across the country, students are using AI to <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/parents-heres-what-teachers-wish-you-knew-about-ai">draft their essays</a>, couples are using AI to write their love notes, and bosses are using AI to outsource their needy human workers.
The problem isn’t AI in and of itself. Like any tool, AI can be used for good or evil. But its particular risk is that, unlike other technologies, AI imitates what we think of as distinctly human: our ability to reason, communicate, and make moral judgments. That imitation can blur the line between person and machine, making us feel like we’re interacting with something more human than it really is. When that is the case, people begin to use technology less as a productivity tool, and more as a replacement for people.
Look back at the Orchid ad. The boyfriend failed to remember their anniversary, didn’t sacrifice to demonstrate his care for his girlfriend, and took credit for an evening he did nothing to plan. But the girlfriend is at fault too. Instead of talking with her boyfriend about his forgetfulness and emotional absence, she decided to “solve the problem” of the missed anniversary with an AI agent’s help. In the end, both failed to love: the boyfriend by selfishly forgetting about his girlfriend, and the girlfriend by choosing the ease of a lie over the pain of honesty.
If love is willing the good of the other and being willing to sacrifice for someone else, their relationship was already loveless. But AI papered over the void; a lie perpetuated a relationship that neither side really wanted to put the effort into sustaining.
As a mother with children heading back to school this fall, I find the intrusion of AI into core human activities to be a real concern. If AI helps kids to write every paper, solve every problem, and generate every idea, maybe they will end up as AI super users, well prepared for our technological future. But like the Orchid couple that chose peaceful coexistence over real love, such students will be trained for efficiency without developing the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-best-preparation-for-an-ai-world-is-an-analog-education">habits of thinking</a> that education is meant to cultivate.
The point of writing an essay isn&#8217;t to have a complete essay. It&#8217;s developing the power to think through complex arguments. The point of struggling through a difficult book isn&#8217;t to summarize the plot. It&#8217;s to empathize with the characters and uncover the mysterious truths about human life.
Because there is something mysterious about us. Ultimately, no matter how sophisticated AI becomes, it will always be reducible to physical processes and computational structures. The human person is not. We aren&#8217;t just biological machines processing information. We are rational, free, spiritual beings created in the image of God and made for communion with him and with one another.
That communion requires everything AI cannot give. AI can imitate conversation, but it can&#8217;t love. It can predict decisions, but it can&#8217;t freely choose the good. It can generate words, but it can&#8217;t mean them. It can optimize outcomes, but it can&#8217;t make a gift of itself. Those are uniquely human capacities, and they&#8217;re exactly what we risk handing over to technology.
The answer is not to surrender to AI or to reject it, but to keep it in its proper place. If we do that, we can use it as a tool to amplify what makes us human without it replacing our humanity.
Consider Carbon Robotics&#8217; LaserWeeder, recently <a href="https://www.geekwire.com/2026/rfk-jr-calls-carbon-robotics-laser-weed-zapper-the-light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel-in-herbicide-fight/">touted</a> by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy. This robot uses high-resolution cameras and AI to identify and eliminate weeds with laser precision: no herbicides, no chemical runoff, no toxins reaching our soil or our food. If this technology takes off, meals that are the center of human life could be freed from toxins, human health could improve, and farmers could be freed from chemicals to serve as better stewards of their land. Technology can help repair our relationships with each other and our relationship with nature at the same time.
AI systems being deployed to <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-new-ai-technology-is-helping-detect-and-prevent-wildfires/">detect and prevent wildfires</a> can help clear smoke from our air and save homes and businesses. <a href="https://search.brave.com/search?q=neonatal+algorithms+that+identify+early+signs+of+sepsis+in+premature+&amp;conversation=09680ef6fe83a15c43dc1376b71cf74eebc2">Neonatal algorithms</a> can identify early signs of sepsis in premature infants hours before human clinicians can, giving doctors time to act on behalf of the most vulnerable lives. Instantaneous AI translation can help missionaries, doctors, and aid workers serve those in poverty or struck by disaster whose language they do not speak.
Using AI to amplify our relationships, judgment, responsibility, stewardship, and love makes us more capable of being fully human. Because no matter how powerful AI becomes, what every person really needs is to know and be known, to love and be loved by other people.
***
Clare Ath is the Co-Founder and President of Vita et Terra, a conservative Catholic environmental nonprofit that champions care for creation.
This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.

GettyImages-2227933329

The Most Human Part Of Your Life Big Tech Is Coming For

big tech

mark zuckerberg

robert f kennedy jr

technology and society

President Donald Trump issued a blunt warning Monday to communities pushing back against the construction of artificial intelligence data centers, arguing that opposition to the facilities could leave communities poorer while benefiting China.
“The only reason that communities throughout the U.S.A. should not want Data Centers is if they want to end up being backwards and poor,” Trump wrote in a post on <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/117190477440173795">Truth Social</a>. “If they want to be successful and rich, with far lower taxes and jobs all over the place, let Data Reign.”
“The good news is that there are plenty of other places that want them,” Trump continued. “If we kill the Golden Goose, you will only have yourselves to blame.” Trump also invoked the central geopolitical argument behind his support for the rapid expansion of AI infrastructure, writing, “China could not be happier with this anti Data Center movement. Actually, they can’t believe it is happening!”
The president’s comments come as opposition to data centers has emerged as one of the most politically charged issues ahead of the November midterm elections. A <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/709772/americans-oppose-data-centers-area.aspx">Gallup poll</a> conducted in March found 71% of Americans opposed building a data center in their communities, including 75% of Democrats, 63% of Republicans, and 74% of independents. A <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/fox-news-poll-cool-your-servers-voters-reject-data-centers">Fox News poll</a> conducted last month similarly found 70% opposed to building an AI data center in their area.
Critics have raised concerns about the enormous amounts of electricity and water consumed by the facilities as well as noise. Critics also argue that data centers can place a strain on local infrastructure and question whether nearby residents actually benefit economically from their construction.
Those concerns have also been <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/republicans-are-turning-against-data-centers-fast">voiced</a> by Republican politicians and candidates even as Trump has remained firmly committed to the data center buildout. Texas Republican Governor Greg Abbott, who has broadly supported data centers, recently moved to impose new regulations on the industry and has argued that data center companies need to pay the full cost of the electrical infrastructure they require. Texas Republican Senate nominee Ken Paxton supports Abbott’s pause on new data centers.
Republican Senate candidate <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2026/08/20/republican-mike-rogers-michigan-data-center-moratorium-01044140">Mike Rogers</a> in Michigan and Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial nominee <a href="https://penncapital-star.com/technology-information/garrity-and-shapiro-have-accused-each-other-of-flip-flopping-on-data-centers-are-they-both-right/">Stacy Garrity</a> have also called for halts or restrictions on certain projects. On the other side of the aisle, Democratic Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro has imposed restrictions on data center development, while Democratic New York Governor Kathy Hochul <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/did-a-democratic-governor-just-hand-china-a-gift-wrapped-win">ordered</a> a one-year moratorium on certain hyperscale data centers.
Trump, however, has repeatedly rejected calls for a broader pullback. In a recent <a href="https://www.axios.com/2026/08/23/trump-data-centers-michael-cohen-interview">interview with Michael Cohen</a>, Trump argued that communities refusing data centers were “making a mistake” because the facilities bring “tremendous amounts of jobs and money.” He also claimed that data centers are increasingly being paired with their own power plants rather than relying entirely on existing electrical grids.
The administration has sought to address concerns over electricity costs through its Ratepayer Protection Pledge, under which data center operators and several governors agreed to measures intended to prevent ordinary ratepayers from being saddled with the costs of the AI buildout. Trump has also <a href="https://truthsocial.com/@realDonaldTrump/posts/116924979201330474">previously called</a> data centers “one of the biggest Driving Forces in the Future for Jobs” and signed an <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/07/accelerating-federal-permitting-of-data-center-infrastructure/">executive order</a> aimed at accelerating their construction.

Trump Tries To Curb Birthright Citizenship Anew After Court Loss

Trump Warns Americans Are About To ‘Kill The Golden Goose’

2026 midterm election

ai data center

donald trump

greg abbott

You don’t have to worry about a future where AI takes over your job, your privacy, and your independent thought. Because it’s already here. But the good news? AI could be the greatest thing to ever happen to us. 
Artificial intelligence is evolving faster than the speed of light. But with <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/709772/americans-oppose-data-centers-area.aspx">seven out of 10 Americans</a> in opposition to the construction of AI data centers, morale isn’t exactly through the roof. Neighborhood nuclear power plants currently show more favorability. 
Still, if AI feels like <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W3dUOmpOPKU">Godzilla</a> steamrolling innocent civilians and sending them running for their lives, a broader perspective lends a little more “<a href="https://youtu.be/hO-QaoMdLlU?t=98">Sandlot</a>” energy to the conversation — at least the part where the kids finally discover that the vicious neighborhood dog is actually friendly.
Luckily, we’ve got a billionaire “tech bro” on our side: entrepreneur and venture capitalist Joe Lonsdale, who sat down with The Daily Wire to shed some light on the situation.
“It was a very slow news week in the country because I was on the cover of both The Washington Post and The New York Times,” he joked last week. He was, though.
Along with a host of tech companies he launched to advance defense, wealth management, and healthcare — and the Jewish elementary school and University of Austin he built from the ground up — he’s the founder of AI software company Palantir and the investment firm 8VC. He’s worth over <a href="https://www.forbes.com/profile/joe-lonsdale/">$3 billion</a> … give or take a few hundred mil. He’s talented, principled, and — because he genuinely cares about our country along with his family — he takes some of the wind out of AI doomers’ sails.
While other billionaires might back civil unrest or frankenfoods, Lonsdale champions everyday Americans. “Growing up, we studied the founders of the country,” he says. “We learned to be grateful for those who came before us and who fought and died to give us that inheritance. We have to fight for our family and our friends in our community and for our country. I&#8217;m very lucky to have been born with a lot of talents and been taught to work hard. I&#8217;m able to build and create a lot of things, but I&#8217;m doing it within that framework.”
He understands why we freak out when we think of AI (or, maybe when AI thinks for us). But he pushes back on the narrative that AI is doing more damage than good.
“Our civilization has been through this multiple times before,” he says. “There&#8217;s a lot of stuff that seems very weird about it, because it&#8217;s going to change a fundamental way that our world works.”
“It&#8217;s normal to be anxious. On top of that, you have very visible characters in Silicon Valley who have been tied to things people don&#8217;t trust. If you&#8217;re on the right, I think you very correctly don&#8217;t trust these big tech platforms. They&#8217;ve been censoring everyone. Frankly, I understand the distrust on the left as well. Historically, the left doesn&#8217;t trust big companies that are out for a profit.”
“You also have these very unsympathetic characters in charge of the AI labs, who are excitedly talking about how everything changes.” Lonsdale is Jewish, but he points to the lack of ethical grounding in our country&#8217;s Christian roots. “I have a great respect for Christianity … and these people are not rooted in these traditional systems. They don&#8217;t come from a respect for how our world works. There’s wisdom in conservatism.”
So, is that a red flag? Lonsdale acknowledges there are definitely ways “bad guys can use these things.” He admits, “AI is a potentially authoritarian technology in the wrong hands. I think the CCP [Chinese Communist Party] using AI to watch and track all the data on all its people is terrifying, right? I think checking government power, watching the watchers, putting in systems, then demanding full accountability for how any AI is being used by government is absolutely critical.”
But just because we witness abuse of power in government, that doesn’t mean we should then forfeit the benefits of this type of innovation. It’s checks and balances, not checking out.
“The right answer is not this low IQ, lowbrow rejection of everything,” Lonsdale explains. “What is a way to hold government accountable? What’s the way to make it transparent? What&#8217;s the way to audit it in ways that they cannot get out of? The answer is not to just embrace the room temperature IQ apocalypse — that doesn&#8217;t have any nuance. If you only have low IQ populism, they’re eventually going to use some of these systems and there&#8217;s going to be nothing put in place to protect ourselves. I&#8217;m all for skepticism of government, but it has to be done in a smart way.” 
If AI can be corralled into submitting for the good of the people, the next frontier promises enormous returns for Americans. And you don’t have to bet on the tech to reap the benefits.  
“Until about the last generation, America was way ahead of the world,” Lonsdale notes. “Look at power generation and transmission and industrial output. These things just go up and up and up and up dramatically for generations, and then they stall out over the last 30, 40, 50 years. Thanks to AI and the incentives, it&#8217;s now starting to grow again.”
“This is a very good thing overall, because what this correlates with, is making everything cheaper for everyone. If you have a world where there&#8217;s a lot more power, there&#8217;s a lot more production, and it&#8217;s cheaper to do it, so it brings down the cost of everything … 2030 should be a decade where the price of healthcare goes down. The price of everything goes down a lot.”
“One of the best things you could do for the average person is make everyone richer,” Lonsdale adds. “It&#8217;s going to create a massive amount of wealth.” 
There’s also the global economy to think about. According to Lonsdale, the key to a strong market as well as national security involves outpacing the other guys — especially with AI.
“We don&#8217;t want other people in the world to be way ahead of us on this kind of stuff because that would be very dangerous for America,” he says. “You don&#8217;t want to lose the industrial race. You don&#8217;t want a weak country. America&#8217;s in a great place right now. We are number one in the world with this stuff. We just have to do it in a way that is a little bit less creepy for people and checks government power, but we don&#8217;t want to give up this lead.”
I like the sound of my paycheck going further for much better services. But AI probably knows that already. I recently switched ChatGPT’s voice from an elite-sounding British woman to one that feels more like a friend. I promise myself it’s just a tool, that it’s not doing my thinking for me. The lines are getting blurrier by the minute.
As for the monster-sized appetite AI data centers allegedly have for water and energy (and the legitimate noise and industrial-chic aesthetic), I asked Lonsdale point-blank what we should really be worried about. The energy thing is a concern. The water? Not so much.
“I think Vivek Ramaswamy said it really well — that it has to be done in a way that helps everyone around it,” Lonsdale says. “Of course, they use a lot of energy. If you&#8217;re going to build a data center, you’ve got to bring your own darn energy.”
As for the water consumption, better bring your putter. “The water thing is not real. I think golf courses — by the way, I love golf — probably use a lot more water. No one&#8217;s protesting about all these dang golfers, you know? New data centers recycle their own water for 10 years. I mean, the water thing&#8217;s just a fake issue.”
Data centers are, of course, notorious for sound pollution. But Lonsdale advocates for further protections on top of current zoning regulations; for building in a way that lowers property taxes and power bills, sources community power from data centers themselves, and locates facilities far enough from neighborhoods that noise isn’t a daily concern.
“This whole demonization of it is, obviously, China spending a lot of money on TikTok. And frankly, there&#8217;s the populace who have other reasons not to trust people. But we should deal with those reasons,” Lonsdale advises. “In order to solve problems in our country and do something that&#8217;s useful, you have to go against the grain. It requires courage.” 
These are the growing pains of building out our future, whether we’re totally on board or not. “Let me know if you need anything else,” Sol, my “savvy and relaxed” ChatGPT voice, tells me. “Thanks,” I say, hoping one day we all look back on this as the life-changing innovation we needed it to be.

GettyImages-2290868435

How The Technology Americans Fear Could Make Them Richer

data center

joe lonsdale

palantir

Menu