Super-Woke Globalists Proposed to Regulate AI. The Human Factor in AI Disasters. Who Will Stop the Houthis? Sydney Sweeney’s Breasts. Rate Hike? Why Dems Can’t Quit Piker. More 

Who will save us?

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has put together a handpicked super-woke group of globalists he thinks will save us from an AI apocalypse:

It’s a group of globalists who believe in open borders, genderless pronoun and promote “Effective Altruism,” that believe all the world’s problems can be solved with technology.

In a bombshell essay titled “We Must Pace the Frontier,” Amodei argued that leading AI firms should commit to allowing “embedded third-party evaluators” from a nonprofit called Model Evaluation and Threat Research, or METR, that would maintain “employee-like access” to oversee safety efforts and ensure advanced AI models don’t turn Terminator and wipe out humanity.

For those who find Mr. Amodei’s regulators dystopian, Nicholas Wade offers “How to Manage the AI Risk?” in City Journal: “The dangers aren’t just hypothetical—but safety measures shouldn’t be used to entrench today’s dominant firms,” Wade argues. “Humans Are to Blame for AI Failures,” MIT Dean Daniel Hottenlocher refreshingly asserts: “Hugging Face wouldn’t have happened if nobody had given the system the power to do what it did.”

“Do the AI Doomsayers Have a Hidden Agenda?” asks Louise Perry of the Wall Street Journal’s Free Expression section. Noting that predictions of catastrophe are often convenient cover for unpopular political projects, Perry suggests the Age of the Nerd is upon us:

Apocalyptic AI predictions cast the nerd as both the greatest threat to mankind and the savior who might offer us a route out of disaster, or even toward utopia. All of these visions rely on atheist assumptions that cast humans as simultaneously cosmically insignificant—and therefore easily snuffed out—but also the potential creators of Godlike technologies.

Forget nerds. Think of the brave new world of algorithmic politicians, Sean Davis of The Federalist, suggests on X:

The print era gave us leaders who wrote well. The radio era gave us leaders who sounded strong. The TV era gave us leaders who looked good. The Internet and social media era gave us leaders who went viral. The Algorithm era will give us something quite different: politicians who cater to the whims of the oligarchs who own the computing power and control the algorithm. This is why they freaked out when Elon Musk bought Twitter and turned it into X.

Back on Terra Firma. “Who Will Stop the Houthis?” asks an editorial in The Wall Street Journal. The Houthis are an Iranian proxy militia that is threatening to block Saudi oil exports and poses a threat to Israel and Egypt:

All of this argues for a regional military response to the Houthis, but who will lead it? Saudi Arabia spends $70 billion a year on defense and has a capable air force. But it can’t defeat the Houthis alone or merely from the air. Retaking the strategic islands and ports will require ground troops.

There are now risks all around, but the biggest is if the world concludes that Iran and the Houthis are defeating Mr. Trump, the U.S. and its Middle Eastern allies. Someone needs to stop the Houthis.

Seven Republicans joined Democrats to stop President Trump: They voted to rein in the Iran war, but a presidential veto is almost certain.

Sydney Sweeney’s Breasts. “Please spare us the sanctimony over her latest risqué ad,” Jenny Holland of Spiked Online begs, referring to Ms. Sweeney’s ad for sports-betting site Novig, for which she wears only “strategically placed sports equipment and says the word ‘sports’ over and over again, to mesmerizing effect.” Holland writes:

I regret to inform you that I am once again writing about Sydney Sweeney’s boobs – but only because her body parts are all over the news again….

Now a host of female athletes has taken to social media to voice their outrage. ‘Sydney Sweeney, this is what women in sports look like’, posted one sanctimonious British sprinter on Instagram. But Sweeney is not in women’s sport. She’s an actress advertising a betting company.

Besides, let’s not forget that, for many years now, female sports have been at the center of one of the most outrageous scandals in living memory: the often successful effort to allow men to compete as women, and against women, thus depriving women athletes of their deserved victories and their basic human dignity. My research has found that none of the sportswomen publicly condemning Sweeney has said a single solitary thing about that.

Caitlin Flanagan weighs in on the issue in “Sydney Sweeney’s Naked Truth” at The Free Press: “The backlash against the actress’s barely there betting ad is ferocious, bitter—and an admission of defeat,” argues Flanagan. USA TODAY’s Ingrid Jaques puts her finger on the real cause of all this breast beating: “Sydney Sweeney’s new ad for sports betting app Novig has sparked backlash from athletes and critics alike. But the real issue isn’t the ad – it’s that she’s a registered Republican.”

Not As Much Fun. Stubborn inflation is setting the stage for the Federal Reserve to hike interest rates. The Fed is meeting today, and the market is holding steady (so far today) as it waits for the Fed rate decision. The Fed is seen as likely to hike the rate. Will it be the end of a beautiful friendship?

I Can’t Quit You. Psychiatrist Jonathan Alpert writes at The Hill on “Why Democrats keep coming back to Hasan Piker“:

The obvious answer is his audience. Piker reaches huge numbers of young people who aren’t necessarily watching cable news, reading newspapers or paying much attention to what politicians say on Sunday morning shows. But I don’t think his appeal can be explained by audience size alone. When politicians go on his stream, they aren’t just trying to reach his viewers. They are trying to tap into the relationship he has with them.

As a psychotherapist, I find that relationship more interesting than Piker’s politics. Think about the world as many of his younger viewers experience it. Housing feels out of reach. Dating is miserable. Democracy always seems to be in danger. The climate is approaching catastrophe. Open your phone and there’s another crisis waiting for you.

For some viewers, the outrage becomes another reason to trust him.

This isn’t peculiar to the left. There are figures on the right whose followers respond much the same way. The difference for Democrats is that they want Piker’s audience. They know he can reach young voters they have trouble reaching themselves, which leaves them in the awkward position of criticizing him while still needing what he has built.

Michigan Democratic Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed was grilled in a solo “debate” last night the GOP’s Mike Rogers skipped it) on Piker, Israel, and campaign money. Meanwhile, the Washington Post reports that control of the Senate may depend on whether former Senator and current Sherrod Brown can win back working-class voters in Ohio.

“The SAT Didn’t Create the Education Gap” is the headline on Jason Riley’s column. Colleges and universities that eliminated the SAT are bringing it back. Notre Dame is the latest. Interesting tidbit:

Typically, professors teach to the middle of student comprehension, which makes it more likely that someone with an SAT score significantly below the school average will have difficulty keeping up. Success in college—earning good grades and graduating with a degree in your preferred major—is highly correlated with attending a school where your academic preparedness approximates your classmates’.

“U.S. Space Weapons Are a Force for Peace.” The new Secretary of the Air Force revealed that the U.S. has weapons in space, and a WSJ editorial explains why this is a good thing. But Is There Intelligent Life on Earth? Don’t miss out on out-of-control Rep. Maxine Waters’ “exchange” with Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent.