Source: Astral Codex Ten
by Scott Alexander

“In 2021, a researcher named Daniel Kokotajlo published a blog post called ‘What 2026 Looks Like,’ where he laid out what he thought would happen in AI over the next five years. The world delights in thwarting would-be prophets. The sea of possibilities is too vast for anyone to ever really chart a course. At best, we vaguely gesture at broad categories of outcome, then beg our listeners to forgive us the inevitable surprises. Daniel knew all this and resigned himself to it. But even he didn’t expect what happened next. He got it all right. … A year later, OpenAI hired Daniel to their policy team. While he worked for them, he was limited in his ability to speculate publicly. … Unluckily for Sam Altman but luckily for the rest of us, Daniel broke with OpenAI mid-2024 in a dramatic split covered by the New York Times and others. He founded the AI Futures Project to produce the promised sequel …” (04/03/25)

https://www.astralcodexten.com/p/introducing-ai-2027

Source: spiked
by Brendan O’Neill

“‘No free trade without free speech,’ says one US source. In short, if the British state doesn’t stop muzzling the unwoke, our nation will suffer. Mighty America will rap our knuckles. … it is an intolerable intrusion into our sovereign affairs for America to tie free trade to free speech. It’s a clear stab at interference in the internal matters of an independent state: ours. I detest our culture of censorship, but I also detest the idea that it is the duty of a distant power to compel us to dispense with it. The former is an assault on our right of self-government, on the liberty of every Briton to speak as he or she sees fit. But the latter is an assault on our right to democratic government, on the freedom of Britons to determine the fate of their nation free from external pressure.” (04/02/25)

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/04/02/the-last-thing-britain-needs-is-trumps-free-speech-imperialism/

Source: In These Times
by Alberto Toscano

“‘Who has the right to have rights?’ This is the urgent question asked by Mahmoud Khalil, the recent Columbia University graduate seized from his home on March 8, in the stirring open letter he dictated 10 days later from an Immigration and Customs Enforcement lock-up in Louisiana. In the letter, Khalil affirmed his identity as a Palestinian ​’political prisoner’ as well as his solidarity with everyone who has been thrown into the punitive limbo of the Trump administration’s detention and deportation machine. Since the college encampments began, it’s been clear that people like Khalil — international students engaged in campus activism for Palestine — were to have no right to freedom of speech, assembly or movement that the U.S. government must respect and that they would become the target of increased state repression.” (04/03/25)

https://inthesetimes.com/article/mahmoud-khalil-repression-detention-democracy-gaza-encampments

Source: The Atlantic
by Charles Sykes

“There is a temptation to overhype or read too much into the results of off-year elections. In this case, I suggest we succumb. Yesterday, Wisconsin voters exposed, humiliated, and decisively rejected the world’s richest man. And they sent a stark message to Republicans in Washington. … By inserting himself into the Wisconsin race, Musk, the billionaire who has become a top adviser to President Donald Trump, had hoped to cement his status as MAGA enforcer and kingmaker. Instead, he provided Republicans with graphic evidence that he has become a political boat anchor.” (04/02/25)

https://archive.is/wLEpX