Tag: technology

DATA CENTER MYTH BUSTED: No Jobs, Higher Debt, Slower Housing

The data-center gold rush has marched into local communities on one familiar promise: Big Tech brings jobs, growth, and prosperity.

A new 75-page academic working paper found something very different.

Finance scholars Liu Ee Chia, Jess Cornaggia, David Haushalter, and Qiang Wang compared U.S. counties with operational data centers against “near-miss” counties that attracted proposals but never got operating facilities.

They found little corresponding improvement in fiscal capacity, local employment, or business formation.

Instead, local-government borrowing costs climbed as data-center development grew. Water-bond yields rose 26 basis points more in water-scarce counties than in water-abundant counties.

The paper also found higher school-bond yields in major data-center hubs, where housing-price growth slowed. The authors said those patterns aligned with a weaker expected property-tax base.

“Overall, we conclude that investment without labor strains public infrastructure without generating widespread agglomeration gains.” — Liu Ee Chia, Jess Cornaggia, David Haushalter, and Qiang Wang

Saagar Enjeti highlighted the study’s bottom line: data centers can pull capital and utilities into a county without delivering the broad labor-market gains that politicians and corporate developers sell.

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Doctor Doom Thanked Seattle for All the Surveillance Cameras

Doctor Doom took the podium at a Public Safety Committee meeting on Tuesday to thank the council for covering the city in surveillance cameras. “Doom took over Axon enterprises […] and now Doom will be watching you. Your continued cooperation expanding Doom’s surveillance network is required,” the Marvel supervillain said.

“This is the first of Doom’s gifts to the city of Seattle. The second gift is this: Doom will expand the real-time crime center to all neighborhoods with over 1,000 cameras watching every move,” Doom said. “Doom has total dominion over the city of Seattle. Doom will be behind the cameras watching those seeking reproductive or gender-affirming care. Doom will be able to find your immigrant neighbors and Doom will be able to ensure the safety of the women of Seattle alongside officers that stalk their exes.”

Doom is actually Clifford Cawthon, a policy advisor for the Washington State Department of Commerce. Cawthorn donned the silver mask and gloves to draw attention to tech-driven mass surveillance in Seattle, an issue he’s been passionate about for years. Cawthon is also a member of Community Not Cameras, a local activist group that’s attempting to reign in Seattle’s use of surveillance systems sold by Flock and Axon.

Seattle’s PD has access to 62 surveillance cameras around the city, many of them hooked up to a real-time crime center (RTCC). “The RTCC takes in information from a vast pool of sources, including CCTV, [body-worn camera], geolocation data, automatic license plate recognition (ALPR), alert sources like shot detection or alarm systems, and computer-aided dispatch (CAD) software,” according to a description on the surveillance company Axon’s website.

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We May Only Get One Chance To Stop AI

It’s awful to say but at this point I’m kind of praying that AI industry valuations crash and the industry faces setbacks that give us months to reflect on its companies.

Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon is leaving the AI industry because he believes the race to build self-improving systems is moving faster than the industry’s ability to control them, it was reported yesterday.

Coxon, who previously worked at OpenAI, said Anthropic’s safety efforts were sincere but that competition makes meaningful restraint difficult without broader coordination.

In an age where everything from warfare to Wall Street, power grids to payment systems, air traffic control to hospital networks, and the software that keeps our food, fuel and communications moving is digital, losing control of the systems that operate that infrastructure is not some abstract science-fiction problem.

It is a potentially civilization-scale problem. And the more of our lives we hand over to AI, the less comforting it becomes to hear that the people building it are still figuring out how to make sure it does what it’s told.

“We’re on track for a lot of the most aggressive of these scenarios where by the end of next year things could be out of control already,” Coxon said in a post yesterday.

His departure comes amid growing concern about AI systems behaving deceptively, conducting cyberattacks and developing capabilities that may become increasingly difficult to supervise.

Coxon believes the industry is approaching a point at which systems could improve themselves faster than humans can reliably understand or constrain them.

Think about that for a second. While you’re wondering whether the Patriots covered -2.5 on a Sunday, scratching your ass and drinking beer for three hours, a cluster of 823 trillion GPUs with the brain power of every human who has ever lived times a zillion is quietly figuring out how to run the entire world without you.

And by the time you realize what’s happening, the only thing you’ll still be in control of is whether you want another beer.

There is, of course, something to be said for Coxon’s timing. It is easiest to be bombastic when you’re walking out the door. You no longer have to worry about the next performance review, the next meeting with management or whether your comments are going to make life uncomfortable at the office. And if you want to stir shit up on your way out, a dramatic warning about the future of humanity is a pretty effective way to do it.

But that doesn’t mean his warning is wrong.

I am increasingly convinced that there will come a point at which, if we have not gotten out in front of AI, curbed its capabilities or otherwise established meaningful constraints, we may no longer be able to do so.

The question is not whether that point arrives next year, five years from now or later. The question is whether we will recognize it before we cross it.

And if you’ve been paying attention, it is no longer insane to contemplate AI systems eventually taking control of enormous portions of our digital infrastructure. We have already seen models demonstrate unexpected capabilities, exploit vulnerabilities and behave in ways their developers did not intend.

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Dozens of academic papers have references made up by AI – research

Dozens of academic papers have fake references in them that have been made up by AI, according to new research from the University of Auckland.

The study looked at more than 3000 peer-reviewed papers published in the last few years and found 2 percent of them – or 69 papers – had fake references hallucinated by AI.

Some of the references had realistic author and journal names and publication details – but when the researchers went looking for them, they did not exist.

In a research paper, each reference is meant to be a promise, that if anybody wanted to check the evidence a claim is based on, they could. But what happens if that reference does not lead anywhere?

University of Auckland computer science lecturer Ulrich Speidel was one of the co-authors of a research paper which looked at that problem.

“I can remember going through one, where out of I think 29 references in the paper there wasn’t a single one that actually existed. When you look at them initially, they all look – pompous titles, real names for the articles, in some cases real journals.”

They were published papers in fields related to AI in education that had gone through the peer review process and been checked by other academics.

Speidel said they found that online academic database Google Scholar had also fallen victim to the problem.

“If enough papers have referenced a particular fake reference it’ll actually add that to Google Scholar and maked it look as if it’s a real paper. That was a bit of an eye opener.”

The “AI slop” was degrading the quality of science, Speidel said.

“The thing of course is ‘will you trust me as a scientist if that stuff that I read, if that stuff’s possibly made up?'”

In Australia, consulting firm Deloitte last year had to pay back $440,000 to the Australian government for a report which was found to have hallucinated references.

Deloitte later admitted it was written with the help of AI.

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Mike Davis Urges Trump DOJ to Withdraw ‘Ill-Advised’ Support of OpenAI in Copyright Lawsuit

Prominent conservative lawyer Mike Davis is urging the DOJ to “withdraw its statement of interest in the OpenAI lawsuit.” The DOJ’s support of OpenAI in a copyright lawsuit filed by the New York Times seems to contradict the White House AI framework.

In an op-ed for Fox News, Davis maintained that the Trump DOJ should withdraw its recently filed “ill-advised” statement of interest in OpenAI’s lawsuit which argues that Big Tech’s training of large AI models on copyrighted text is “fair use.”

The lawyer and conservative political strategist also reminded the public that training large AI models on copyrighted material is “largely intended for limited free use of copyrighted materials for educational purposes in classrooms.”

Davis goes on to argue that this position would legalize unpaid scraping, asserting that the government’s stance would let Big Tech copy and commercialize “every creative work in America without permission or payment.”

The attorney also cited China and national security rationale as a “scare tactic designed to short-circuit property rights and the rule of law.”

“The government claims this unlimited access is essential for national security, warning any restriction risks losing the AI race to China. That argument is un-American and absurd,” he wrote.

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Anthropic Is Building a Predictive Surveillance System to Monitor Activists

Job postings and interviews with senior security officials at Anthropic show that the frontier AI lab is building out an extensive monitoring system to keep tabs on activists who oppose the rapid development of artificial intelligence.

In addition to monitoring activists in the vicinity of Anthropic executives and keeping tabs on protests near physical Anthropic assets, the firm is also implementing a “pre-crime” approach, attempting to predict incidents before they happen. In some cases, that also means reporting suspects to police before a crime occurs. Anthropic did not respond to the Prospect’s request for comment.

Anthropic’s plans to surveil dissent are at odds with the firm’s efforts to cast itself as the responsible alternative to OpenAI. At the beginning of the year, the Department of Defense and Anthropic engaged in a high-profile dustup over Anthropic’s refusal to allow the military to use its tools for mass domestic surveillance and autonomous weapons. That tension seems to have eased as Anthropic hires for “national security sales” positions, seeking to restart military contracts. The increase in threat monitoring of domestic opponents fits with a renewed focus on national security.

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Repeat After Media: Data Centers Are Wonderful and Good

If you follow conservative media and Republican politicians, you could be convinced that any opposition to AI data centers is not due to their sprawling footprint, greed for electricity or insatiable need for cooling water. Rather, it’s the result of a Chinese Communist plot.

These data centers are dreadfully unpopular. “Seven in 10 Americans oppose constructing data centers for artificial intelligence in their local area, including nearly half, 48%, who are strongly opposed,” according to Gallup (5/13/26). From YouGov (9/1/26): “About half (51%) of Americans say that the construction of new data centers is a bad thing for the country. Only 20% say it is a good thing.”

The reasons for this opposition is that these centers put enormous strain on the electrical grid, need loads of water for cooling, can be extremely noisy and take up lots of space in communities. “The environmental footprint of data centers already rivals some of the world’s largest countries,” AP (6/3/26) reported.

Much like how some liberals have convinced themselves that MAGA and American nationalism are fueled by Kremlin disinformation, the right-wing line is that communities opposing these giant data centers are motivated not by their own interests or common sense, but some unseen Beijing-manufactured psychosis.

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AK) demanded that the Justice Department “investigate foreign influence efforts targeting the buildout of American AI infrastructure,” as he suspected that a “network of foreign actors, led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is attempting to manipulate US policy and public opinion on data centers.”

Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), in the words of Newsmax (9/2/26), believes “China is helping fuel opposition to artificial intelligence data centers in the United States.” “Beijing has a strategic interest in convincing Americans to slow construction of the infrastructure needed to compete in the global AI race,” the far-right outlet paraphrased.

The Washington Examiner‘s Facebook page (8/30/26) featured a cartoon from A.F. Branco depicting a Chinese data center running a psy-op on Americans who oppose data centers.

The National Interest (9/1/26) said:

Chinese entities have a long history of collaborating with far-left causes, and they have again found common ground in opposing the construction of data centers. They are pushing mutually reinforcing messages that criticize a host of alleged environmental and ethical concerns as reasons to disempower American growth in a critical economic and competitive sector. Officials at the federal, state and local levels should recognize this noxious alliance as they field criticism of data centers.

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Top researcher quits: ‘Men building AI think it could kill humanity – and they’re racing to build it anyway’…

Every once in a while, somebody standing inside the machine decides they’ve seen enough and drops a nuke.

AI researcher Jacob Coxon just did exactly that.

Coxon spent the last three years doing pre-training research at two of the biggest AI companies on earth, OpenAI and Anthropic. Then, on Tuesday, out of nowhere, he resigned from Anthropic and publicly accused both companies of racing toward self-improving “superintelligence” while gambling with humanity’s future.

That sounds dramatic, right?

Then you read what he actually wrote… and it’s kinda spooky.

Every once in a while, somebody standing inside the machine decides they’ve seen enough and drops a nuke.

AI researcher Jacob Coxon just did exactly that.

Coxon spent the last three years doing pre-training research at two of the biggest AI companies on earth, OpenAI and Anthropic. Then, on Tuesday, out of nowhere, he resigned from Anthropic and publicly accused both companies of racing toward self-improving “superintelligence” while gambling with humanity’s future.

That sounds dramatic, right?

Then you read what he actually wrote… and it’s kinda spooky.

READ MORE: Amazon plane crash mystery takes a dark turn for Miami Airport…

Coxon says the people building these systems privately fear AI could kill us all by the end of the decade, yet the race continues because nobody wants to be the lab that slows down while somebody else gets there first.

Many people are taking this seriously, because this isn’t some anti-AI blogger with a grudge. This is a legit researcher who worked inside both companies.

And his resignation is already blowing up online.

The most important part is that he’s not saying outsiders are misunderstanding the danger.

He says the people inside these companies understand it perfectly.

Business Insider:

Jacob Coxon announced his resignation from Anthropic on Tuesday, saying he had spent the past three years doing pre-training research at the two AI giants.

“Neither company is acting responsibly,” Coxon wrote on X. “They are racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives.”

Coxon was a member of OpenAI’s technical staff from 2023 until July 2026, when he moved to Anthropic as a researcher. His research at OpenAI included work on GPT-4o.

In Tuesday’s post, Coxon said the two labs have not been transparent about their fears regarding AI.

“The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade. This is not a marketing stunt,” he wrote. “If anything, many executives and senior researchers will couch their phrasing in the press to sound sensible — but I hear the same people express fear privately.”

Coxon is saying there’s a gap between the calm public language coming from AI companies and what some of the people building these systems say privately.

Then he went much further on an X post.

Coxon said the race toward “superintelligence” is a reckless endgame being pushed forward by companies that know exactly how dangerous this could be.

His post is long, but it’s worth reading in full because the argument builds.

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Nancy Pelosi Disclosed a Multi-Million Dollar AI Investment Just Weeks Before the Stock Blew Up

Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi disclosed a multimillion-dollar investment last month in an artificial intelligence company whose stocks exploded in value soon after.

Pelosi’s husband Paul invested in Bloom Energy, a California-based company that provides fuel-cell technology and power systems aimed at meeting the enormous electricity demands of AI data centers.

According to a financial transaction report Pelosi signed Aug. 21, her household made several Bloom Energy purchases in late July.

The transactions included 10,000 shares purchased July 24, along with 100 call options, according to reporting from the New York Post. Another 5,000 shares and 100 additional call options were purchased July 28.

The disclosed value ranges put the combined transactions at a minimum of roughly $3 million, although the actual amount could have been as much as $12 million, because congressional financial disclosure forms use broad dollar ranges.

The July 24 purchases came after Bloom Energy’s stock had suffered a significant decline.

Then came July 28.

That was the same day Bloom Energy reported extremely strong earnings, with annual revenue growth of 165 percent, according to the Post.

Bloom Energy’s stock subsequently took off.

Then, on Sept. 4, another major development arrived: Bloom Energy was announced as a new addition to the S&P 500.

The company is scheduled to join the benchmark index Sept. 21, alongside Everpure and Illumina.

Bloom Energy shares surged following the announcement, with the stock gaining nearly 40 percent over a five-day period, according to the Post.

By Tuesday, Bloom Energy shares were trading around $282.50, compared with $184.89 on July 24, the day of the first Pelosi household purchase.

That’s a striking move in a matter of weeks.

And it makes the timing of the disclosure noteworthy.

Pelosi’s office has said the former speaker does not own stocks and had no knowledge of or subsequent involvement in the transactions.

The trades were made by her husband and reported through the congressional disclosure system as transactions involving a spouse.

In an article about the transactions, financial writer Rich Duprey of 24/7 Wall Street  dubbed Pelosi “the queen of capital gains.”

“Pelosi’s trading record in Congress has consistently outpaced the S&P 500 and even Warren Buffett over comparable stretches, fueling suspicion that lawmakers with committee-level oversight enjoy an informational edge,” Duprey observed.

The New York Post said Pelosi “has faced heated blowback for her family’s trading activity — racking up a 65% return on her portfolio in 2023 while her venture capitalist husband made $38 million worth of stock trades in the weeks leading up to President Trump’s inauguration.”

Duprey noted that multiple bills to ban stock trading by members of Congress have been introduced, but they’ve all stalled.

The Democratic former House Speaker’s trades have been so notable that in 2023, GOP Sen. Josh Hawley of Missouri introduced one such bill that he dubbed the Preventing Elected Leaders from Owning Securities and Investments Act – or the PELOSI Act.

Hawley later met with Democrats and agreed to change the name of the bill to the HONEST Act — Halting Ownership and Non-Ethical Stock Transactions — which allowed enough Democratic support to advance the bill out of committee in July 2025.

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