The hottest Labor impact Substack posts right now

The Pentagon–Anthropic standoff shows governments may use extreme leverage against AI firms, risking national security and civil liberties if supply‑chain or compulsion tactics are applied.
AI capabilities are accelerating fast — new model upgrades and agent automation are delivering real utility but also causing outages, jailbreaks, and a credible risk of large-scale job displacement.
Industry, policymakers, and global elites are largely unprepared or in denial; alignment, auditing, and practical regulation are lagging while dangerous uses like autonomous weapons, impersonation, and data theft grow.

AI is increasingly seen as a zero-sum force because its benefits are spread thin while real costs hit specific workers, towns, and companies hard, creating anger and political backlash.
How leaders and companies talk about AI matters — boastful messaging and visible rivalries make the technology feel threatening instead of helpful.
There’s not enough real investment in helping people adapt; temporary construction jobs and hand‑wavy retraining won’t fix long‑term displacement, so durable support and policy are needed.

Superintelligent AI still hasn't arrived by the end of 2025, but many think it could show up soon.
Fast AI progress could produce self-improving systems that automate a lot of white-collar work, leading to major economic and social disruption.
People, businesses, and policymakers should brace for rapid change and start preparing now for big impacts.

AI is likely to automate a lot of white‑collar work and cause significant job losses, especially for early‑career workers, while political leaders are unlikely to provide robust safety nets like UBI or a jobs guarantee.
The AI industry currently lacks a clear path to profitability, is burning massive sums on data centers and infrastructure, and could face a damaging bubble or require government backstops if revenues never justify the spending.
Local communities and politicians are increasingly resistant to data center expansion because of energy, water, and cost impacts, and the overall future of AI is highly uncertain — it might bring real benefits like medical advances or result in overhyped promises and economic harm.

Generative AI should be considered a public problem requiring collective consideration.
Technology problems are not just about technology, but also about social, cultural, political, and economic factors.
An important aspect of addressing AI issues is to collectively debate, account for, and manage them.

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Big tech is treating A.I. as a power grab: companies keep expanding and spending huge amounts while causing environmental and social harm but delivering little real value.
A.I. is hollowing out the internet and creative life by replacing real human-made content, weakening education, and threatening jobs, so people should choose human-made work and push back on A.I. initiatives at work and locally.
Some narrow, targeted machine learning (like medical imaging) can be useful, but most current A.I. is inefficient, unprofitable, and risky, so avoid paying for or supporting harmful A.I. projects and resist its power plays.