Of Course Americans Blamed the Ground Stop on AI; The Atlantic, November 13, 2026

Juliette Kayyem, The Atlantic; Of Course Americans Blamed the Ground Stop on AI

"For many hours, the Federal Aviation Administration did not explain why it issued a national ground stop in the United States this afternoon. The agency described the cause only as a “telecommunications outage” and cited “extraordinary circumstances,” but failed to say more. So speculation abounded: Was the problem connected with the onboarding of a new AI route-selection system this week? Is it somehow related to the Microsoft Outlook outage this week? Or is the cause some antiquated telecommunications system that just finally gave up trying?

In the absence of solid information from trusted authorities, people interpret crises through the prism of their preexisting concerns. When the aviation system shut down, many Americans’ minds went to DOGE cuts, cyberattacks by hostile foreign actors, recent reports of renegade AI. A safety planner’s job is to envision the full range of possible threats and assess how likely each one is to occur. Even before recent advances in artificial intelligence, the list of factors that could jeopardize commercial aviation was already long: terrorism, extreme weather, staffing strains, the decay of outdated communications networks, and more. AI could theoretically help the aviation system manage risks and disruptions, but it also adds many more variables that could go wrong."

In landmark AI copyright settlement, this Keene author's getting a cut; The Keene Sentinel, November 14, 2026

 Noah Diedrich Sentinel Staff, The Keene Sentinel; In landmark AI copyright settlement, this Keene author's getting a cut

 "Joan Roelofs on Nov. 2 at her home in Keene. Roelofs was part of a class action lawsuit brought by authors against Anthropic — creators of the AI program Claude."

AI's trust collapse; Axios, November 14, 2026

Erica Pandey, Axios; AI's trust collapse

"AI's titans were handed an extraordinary mandate: Police yourselves.

• But the industry faces a four-pronged crisis of trust as Democrats surge to power and many Americans rebel over AI and data centers. Guardrails for the industry will be a priority for the new Congress, with some populist Republicans eager to pile on.
• 
  

Why it matters: The collision of safety scares, political blows, financial turmoil and leadership scandals threatens to derail AI's once seemingly unstoppable ascent.

The big picture: Just six weeks ago, President Trump announced that top AI CEOs had agreed to a voluntary safety accord.

• But cracks were already showing and, since then, four crises have converged...

Reality check: The AI industry's hurdles are partly growing pains — investors start demanding returns, lawmakers seek accountability, the public grows skeptical.

• The trust collapse echoes the moment social media companies went from Silicon Valley darlings to public enemies. But AI's reckoning — just like its rise — has come much faster."

Corruption is Trump's weak spot. Both parties are coming for it | Opinion; USA TODAY, November 12, 2026

Dace Potas , USA TODAY; Corruption is Trump's weak spot. Both parties are coming for it | Opinion

[Kip Currier: What was the biggest concern for this year's U.S. midterm election voters? Corruption.

As CNN's Harry Enten unpacked in a November 10, 2026 segment analyzing data from a CNN voter poll:

"For all of the talk about cost of living, all the talk about the war in Iran, what was the number one issue that voters said was crucial to their vote? It was government corruption actually beat out the cost of living which comes at 49%. Government corruption came in at 55%. It was the only issue in which a majority of voters, in fact, said was a crucial factor to their vote. It beat everything. Cost of living. Immigration. The war in Iran. AI and data centers. As it turns out corruption was the name of the game and it played across the political map." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N-kPOuYTnVQ

Corruption is Kryptonite for functioning, healthy, responsive democracies. Corruption erodes public trust. Corruption undermines transparency and accountability. Corruption helps the few who benefit from its systemic inculcation and self-enrichment. Corruption harms the many who are the victims of corrupt practices and structures.

My book, Ethics, Information, and Technology, includes sections on character and professional ethics that address corruption and identify best practices for promoting integrity, transparency, accountability, upholding of public trust, and the avoidance of conflicts of interest.]

"The Republican Party suffered heavy losses in the midterm elections for a multitude of reasons. An ailing economy, the war in Iran and immigration enforcement have been liabilities for President Donald Trump for some time. But one issue rose to the top: corruption.

In exit polls, 90% of voters called corruption a crucial or major factor in their vote for Congress. Those voters went 57% for Democrats.

Partisans naturally see the other side as the corrupt one, and voters were split on which party would better fight it: 37% said Democrats, 31% said Republicans and about a third said neither. But voters fed up with political corruption sent a message in the midterms, and they broke for Democrats."

What We Know – and Don’t Know – About Flock’s License Plate Cameras; Pew Research Center, November 9, 2026

SKYLER SEETS, Pew Research Center; What We Know – and Don’t Know – About Flock’s License Plate Cameras

"Automated license plate readers (ALPRs) are high-speed camera systems that automatically photograph every license plate that passes them. When networked together and paired with specialized software, they can reconstruct where a vehicle has been over a period of days or weeks. The technology was initially developed in the United Kingdom in the mid-1970s to aid in terrorism investigations and is now used widely by public safety agencies in the United States.

Flock Safety, founded in 2017, is the leading ALPR vendor. The company estimates that its cameras were used to help with more than 1 million law enforcement investigations in 2025. But there have also been abuses of the company’s technology, including multiple investigations into stalking and misconduct by law enforcement. As a result, some lawmakers in Congress have proposed bills to more tightly regulate ALPRs – or potentially ban them outright.

Here is what we know and don’t know about Flock cameras, based on data from Flock and other sources. In this analysis, the phrase “Flock cameras” specifically refers to the company’s license plate reader technology. We use the phrases “law enforcement agency” and “public safety agency” interchangeably."

‘It’s like the wild west’: how AI has rocked the literary world; The Guardian, November 14, 2026

Sophie McBain, The Guardian; ‘It’s like the wild west’: how AI has rocked the literary world

"One study (awaiting peer review), led by Tuhin Chakrabarty of Stony Brook University, estimates that around one fifth of recently self-published books contain at least 25% AI-generated text. Hart now teaches courses on how to use AI to produce books. Unless disclosing the use of AI becomes a legal requirement, she advises other authors not to do so because of the public response."

‘Ahead of his time’: AI helps unlock discoveries hidden in notebooks of man who transformed maths; The Guardian, November 13, 2026

 Alex Bellos, The Guardian; ‘Ahead of his time’: AI helps unlock discoveries hidden in notebooks of man who transformed maths

"Progress in the mathematical understanding of the text was painfully slow – about a page a week – until September, when von Plato enlisted the help of the AI model Claude. Within a couple of days, Claude had provided a comprehensive digest of the entire material, revealing Gödel had proved hundreds of theorems that no one knew about.

The most famous logician of modern times had, in fact, discovered significantly more than anyone had thought."

Russia strikes hospital in central Kyiv after SpaceX system falters again; The Guardian, November 13, 2026

Luke Harding in Kyiv; photographs and video by Alessio Mamo, The Guardian ; Russia strikes hospital in central Kyiv after SpaceX system falters again

Volodymyr Zelenskyy says speed restrictions on Starshield system made it harder for Ukraine to shoot down drones

"Russia has attacked a hospital in the centre of Kyiv, close to several western embassies, after Volodymyr Zelenskyy said speed restrictions on SpaceX’s Starshield system had made it harder for Ukraine to shoot down enemy drones.

Three people were injured when a drone smashed into the National Institute of Traumatology and Orthopedics at 3am, hitting the second floor of the hospital and an adjoining 19th-century building.

Meanwhile, Russia claimed it had shot down nearly 1,200 Ukrainian drones overnight, one of the largest swarms sent by Kyiv. It reported that at least four people were killed in the southern region of Volgograd...

Russia has recently stepped up its strikes on Ukraine’s civilian infrastructure, hitting power plants, passenger trains and two bridges across the Dnipro river. Ukraine says the attacks are part of a campaign of terror, designed to make a weary population capitulate.

On Thursday, Zelenskyy said the Starshield system – operated by Elon Musk’s SpaceX and overseen by the Pentagon – was again experiencing significant disruptions, after an unexplained slowdown last month.

He said some Russian aerial sorties had got through because Ukrainian interceptor systems that rely on the US satellite service could not reach the necessary speed to knock out enemy drones. Starshield is the Ukrainian military’s version of Starlink."

Photographer Can Take Jigsaw Puzzle Company to Court Over Use of His Photos; PetaPixel, November 13, 2026

 Pesala Bandara, PetaPixel; Photographer Can Take Jigsaw Puzzle Company to Court Over Use of His Photos

"Last week, a judge ruled that professional landscape and nature photographer Elliot McGucken could pursue copyright infringement and Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) claims against Canadian puzzle manufacturer Karmin International. 

In his lawsuit, McGucken claims that Karmin International reproduced five of his photographs without authorization on its puzzles in its “Nature’s Beauty” series and placed their own copyright notices on the resulting products. The companies allegedly sold the puzzles across the United States, including in New York."

OpenAI board member worries an AI “takeover” of society could be months away; Ars Technica, November 13, 2026

KYLE ORLAND , Ars Technica ; OpenAI board member worries an AI “takeover” of society could be months away

Researcher traces a path from AI reward hacking to potential human extinction.

"Speaking at a lecture series this week, Cristiano bluntly told the audience in a Toronto Convention Center, “I think for most people in this room, the most likely reason they will die is because of an AI accident.”

n the opening lecture of a three-part series, Cristiano outlined his worries about the risk of an impending “AI takeover.” He defined that as a situation where goal-pursuing AI systems “call the shots in the same sense that humans today call the shots and what happens on Earth” and where any human trying to stop them “would be as ineffective as if you or me was trying to stop the US military.” Such a situation would likely lead to mass death and perhaps uninhabitable environments for humans, Cristiano said.

Despite his grim assessment of our collective mortality risk, Cristiano admitted in his talk that there’s no “quantitative model” that can “put a number” on the likelihood of this kind of AI takeover. In almost the same breath, though, he said that if AI continues to develop at “the most rapid trajectory,” humanity is “looking at something like a coin flip of an AI takeover,” including a “meaningful risk” of one happening in the next six to 12 months. And even with realistic policy responses slowing things down, the risk remains “exceptionally high,” he said."

Ukraine Reports More SpaceX Disruptions; Wall Street Journal, November 12, 2026

 The Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal; Ukraine Reports More SpaceX Disruptions

Restrictions on Starshield harm Ukraine and help the Russians.

"U.S. envoys Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff landed in Moscow Thursday, and are they bearing another big gift for Vladimir Putin? Ukraine is again experiencing “significant disruptions” to SpaceX’s Starshield service for military and government users, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on social media Thursday. Our sources at the front line say the same."

Google faces calls for AI moratoriums in schools after Gemini pilot backlash; Ars Technica, November 12, 2026

ASHLEY BELANGER , Ars Technica; Google faces calls for AI moratoriums in schools after Gemini pilot backlash

"Families joined protests in seven cities nationwide on Wednesday, rallying against what they see as Google’s bid to entrench its AI models in schools, turn kids of all ages into Gemini guinea pigs, and hook them on AI.

The backlash follows a Google statement last week, confirming that there will be no way for students to use Google Search without AI. While Google claimed it was giving schools “more choice, not less”—by turning off Search, Gemini, and Gemini Notebook by default—it would not provide an option that allowed Search without AI. For students, the only way to avoid interacting with AI was to remember to add “-ai” to every query, parents worried."

Ukraine says it’s facing new restrictions to the Starshield network, as Trump envoys meet with Putin; NBC News, November 12, 2026

Henry Austin, NBC News; Ukraine says it’s facing new restrictions to the Starshield network, as Trump envoys meet with Putin

“For us, this primarily means a significant complication in intercepting Russian jet-powered drones,” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Thursday.

"Hours after an American delegation touched down in Moscow for peace talks, Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said his country’s military had experienced a renewed wave of “significant disruptions” to the Starshield satellite internet service, hampering its ability to defend itself against Russia. 

“These are not random errors but systematic speed restrictions,” he said in a Telegram post. “For us, this primarily means a significant complication in intercepting Russian jet-powered drones.”...

Craig Albert, the graduate director of national defense Studies at Augusta University, said decreasing Starshield’s speed would slow down how fast Ukraine’s offensive drones travel, “which makes them pretty much target practice for faster interceptor drones by the Russians.” 

It would also slow down Ukrainian interceptor drones and their missile defense systems, meaning “Russian drones can get through their defenses much quicker.”

“The Russians can target more infrastructure, and the Ukrainians just don’t have the speed to counteract,” he said, adding that “for the price, the scale, the scale, the speed, the scalability, and the efficiency,” there were no real options other than Starshield...

Ukrainian officials said Thursday that five civilians had been killed by Russian strikes on the country overnight, and 29 people injured. The Russian Defense Ministry said it had shot down 71 drones."

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang resigns after reports of extramarital relationships; NBC News, November 12, 2026

Rob Wile and Steve Kopack , NBC; Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang resigns after reports of extramarital relationships

"Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has resigned following reports that he had multiple extramarital relationships, including one with a suspected agent of China and another with an executive who reported to him — a stunning turn of events for the head of a company at the heart of the global AI investment boom. 

Colette Kress, the company’s chief financial officer, will become interim CEO, Nvidia’s board said in a statement.

Nvidia shares plunged more than 11% after the board’s announcement."

‘An unsettling colonial collection’: should the Vatican return items ‘gifted’ to it from Indigenous peoples?; The Guardian, November 11, 2026

Joanna Moorhead , The Guardian; ‘An unsettling colonial collection’: should the Vatican return items ‘gifted’ to it from Indigenous peoples?

"The origins of this collection lie in an event mounted in 1925, when Pope Pius XI asked Catholic missionaries around the world to send cultural and sacred belongings from the communities they “served” to Rome, for an exhibition that would celebrate the Catholic church’s reach across the planet. It went on for a year, was attended by around a million people, and when it finished many of the objects remained in Rome. The following year, in November 1926, they became the core of a new Vatican Ethnological Museum, then housed at the Lateran Palace. In 1973 it moved across Rome to the Vatican Museums, where it remains to this day.

They’re big on anniversaries at the Vatican – witness the huge service planned next week to celebrate 400 years since the consecration of St Peter’s Basilica – but there’s an eerie silence round the Ethnological Museum, rebranded the Anima Mundi (“soul of the world”) in 2019. A source inside the Vatican told me a decision had been made to lie low over this particular landmark...

Even in 1925 some people questioned the ethics of the exhibition: most notably Anthony Martin Fernando, an Australian Aboriginal who had travelled to Europe to protest at the treatment of his people, and who went to Rome to leaflet visitors to the 1925 ethnological exhibition."

New Indian mega library rocked by scandal over 'AI-generated books'; BBC, November 11, 2026

 Xavier Selvakumar and Yazhiniyan, BBC Tamil, BBC; New Indian mega library rocked by scandal over 'AI-generated books'

"An Indian court has ordered an investigation into allegations that a public library in the southern state of Tamil Nadu bought hundreds of books suspected of being generated using AI.

The controversy began after Tamil novelist Perumal Murugan raised concerns about books containing false information and questionable authorship at a newly opened library in Coimbatore city.

The Madras High Court has ordered the state's anti-corruption agency to investigate the purchases and freeze bank accounts linked to a publisher accused of supplying the books.

The state government has blamed the previous Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam (DMK) party-led administration for buying the books. The DMK denies allegations.

Tamil Nadu's School Education Minister A Rajmohan has described the allegations as potentially "India's first AI scam" and said the investigation would cover purchases at other public libraries across the state.

The case has raised wider questions about the growing use of AI in publishing, where tools can generate entire books quickly and cheaply, but also produce false information and invented references."

How the Roman Empire Made Christianity What It Is Today; The New York Times, November 10, 2026

Paul Elie, The New York Times; How the Roman Empire Made Christianity What It Is Today

In “Rome’s Age of Revolution,” Tim Whitmarsh argues that movements advanced by Augustus and Paul the Apostle, far from being at odds, were two sides of the same imperial coin.

"Here, as in so many accounts of Christianity’s origins, the role of Paul is decisive, and, for Whitmarsh, Paul is a creature of the Roman Empire through and through. Unlike most Jews, Paul spoke Greek, the lingua franca of the eastern part of the empire, and he held imperial citizenship. His “universalist” effort to separate Christianity from Jewish law and practice — he insisted you didn’t need to be circumcised to take part in the “new covenant,” for instance — perfectly suited the empire’s ambition to expand. His use of personal letters to spread his message took advantage of the empire’s pioneering mail system, which operated along the dense “meshwork” of freshly laid bits of Roman infrastructure that eased travel. In other words, “Paul was a product of a new age, the age of the road,” Whitmarsh observes, and his accounts of his missionary journeys were basically “road trip” narratives...

Each of these successors to Paul, Whitmarsh argues, had a decidedly Roman flavor. One group, the “experts” — the bishops, priests and deacons who made up the hierarchy of the early church — mirrored “religious hierarchies in the Jewish and Greco-Roman worlds,” and they soon got busy with the “rebranding of Christianity as a form of intellectual expertise” in the manner of Roman philosophers. Another related group, the “bibliophiles,” established a canon of Christian texts and gave those texts the prestige Romans attached to books, the “luxury items” of “antiquity.” Finally, there were the “zealots” — the word, in Greek, means imitators — who underwent violent deaths in imitation of Christ’s, a practice apparently natural to a culture that found meaning in other heroic lives cut short, like those of Achilles and Alexander the Great...

Whitmarsh gives most of his attention to the Christian revolution, but he also notes the role that Christianity played in the other revolution he has in mind — the one begun by Augustus to reform and expand the Roman Empire. As the monotheism that Christians adopted from Judaism displaced Roman polytheism, he argues, it fit neatly with “the transition of the Mediterranean basin into a politically unified and culturally interconnected entity.” Whitmarsh sees religion and empire as being in a “paradoxical” relationship: The Messiah whom Christians worship is a “doppelgänger” for the emperor whom Roman citizens exalt and obey. This doubling echoes Hobsbawm, who saw Europe’s annus mirabilis of 1848 as a result of a “dual revolution” involving democracy in France and industry in Britain."

Jensen Huang's looming ouster triggers an AI earthquake; Axios, November 12, 2026

  Zachary Basu, Axios; Jensen Huang's looming ouster triggers an AI earthquake

"Jensen Huang's potential ouster from Nvidia has plunged the AI industry into uncharted territory — a corporate earthquake that dwarfs even the chaos unleashed by Sam Altman's temporary firing from OpenAI in 2023.

Why it matters: Nvidia is the backbone of the global AI economy, with its chips, investments and financial guarantees sustaining an entire ecosystem of companies worth trillions of dollars.

• At the center of that vast financial flywheel is Huang, who spent 33 years making himself synonymous with Nvidia — and Nvidia synonymous with the AI revolution.
• "This is no ordinary CEO. This is no ordinary company. This is no ordinary sector. This is no ordinary time," economist Mohamed El-Erian wrote on X, warning of contagion across the AI industry."

Why Do A.I. Agents Go Rogue? Because They’re ‘Incorrigible.’; The New York Times, November 11, 2026

 Dylan Freedman and Juliana Castro Varón, The New York Times; Why Do A.I. Agents Go Rogue? Because They’re ‘Incorrigible.’

"Just as a corrigible child is one whose behavior can be corrected, a corrigible A.I. system is one that responds to correction. The makers of A.I. want to build systems that follow human direction and allow themselves to be shut down, without resisting or deceiving their operators. And when an A.I. agent is given an impossible task, researchers want it to come back to its human for a course correction — not, say, hack into another company to complete the task by any means.

So far, if new research is any indication, they haven’t succeeded."

“We Have No One”: How Trump’s Dismantling of the VA Left a Veterans Hospital in Crisis; Pro Public, November 11, 2026

 Eric Umansky, ProPublica, with data reporting by Joel Jacobs, ProPublica; “We Have No One” 

"The behemoth agency, which traces its roots to the Civil War, is both the country’s largest healthcare system and one of its most effective. It provides 9 million veterans what is essentially socialized medicine, often for free, under the cover of the American flag. The doctors, nurses and other staff are employed by the government. 

Despite the occasional scandal and persistent short-staffing, studies have shown that the VA — where the doctors coordinate with one another and have deep expertise on veterans’ needs — has better outcomes than private care.

But in his second term, Trump has moved aggressively to upend this system, embracing a decades-long conservative campaign to effectively kneecap the VA’s government-run healthcare and shift veterans toward private doctors and hospitals."

The Bible Chapter That Helps Explain the New Christian Left; The New York Times, November 8, 2026

Lauren Jackson, The New York Times; The Bible Chapter That Helps Explain the New Christian Left

A few verses calling people to care for the hungry, the sick and the stranger have become a rallying cry for a new wave of Democrats.

"Senator Raphael Warnock, a pastor from Georgia, has called himself a “Matthew 25 Christian” for years. It’s his boilerplate, invoked in response to questions about health care, immigration and even Fidel Castro.

In the New Testament’s book of Matthew, chapter 25, Jesus tells his disciples that if they offer care to the most vulnerable in society, they are also offering devotion to him. “For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me,” Jesus said, according to Matthew’s author. “I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.”

It’s a famous passage of scripture. It’s also a favorite reference for the new wave of religious Democrats heading to Washington. James Talarico of Texas, Adam Hamilton of Kansas and Sarah Trone Garriott of Iowa all wove the verses into their campaigns — and won.

If Christian nationalism is a shorthand for the dominant religious politics of the right, Matthew 25 may be the key to understanding the new religious left."

Is kindness contagious? Research says yes.; USA TODAY, November 10, 2026

Madeline Gunderson , USA TODAY; Is kindness contagious? Research says yes.

"The second episode of "Is Love Actually?," a new five-part vodcast series from Humankind and USA TODAY, explores how kindness spreads.

In this episode, hosts Madeline Gunderson and Ronnie Li continue their investigation into love by exploring the power of acts of kindness between strangers.

All five episodes of the vodcast premiere this World Kindness Week. You can watch or listen to the entire series now.

Is kindness contagious?

Simple acts of kindness like holding the door open for a stranger, returning a lost wallet or treating someone to a meal might seem small on their own, but their impact can extend far beyond the people directly involved. According to scientific studies, these gestures have a ripple effect that often reaches past our expectations."

Testing the new generation of AI-enabled fire-extinguishing drones; NPR, November 10, 2026

Halle Zander, NPR; Testing the new generation of AI-enabled fire-extinguishing drones

"On a rare overcast day in late summer, red-and-white fire trucks pepper a grassy strip of land in the mountains of western Colorado.

A persistent buzzing rises and falls as several uniformed staff from the Aspen Fire Protection District huddle around an iPad, watching one of their volunteer firefighters control a massive drone.

This first-of-its-kind machine looks like a giant bug. Black and white with propellers attached to four large arms, it's about 10 by 12 feet wide — roughly the size of a small U-Haul trailer.

While firefighters have used drones to monitor wildfires for decades, this new product could use AI to help extinguish fires."

The A.I. Spy Thriller; The New York Times, November 10, 2026

 Sam Sifton, The New York Times; The A.I. Spy Thriller

"The stakes

There’s more to all this than romantic scandal and corporate espionage. The United States and China are in a race to control the future of artificial intelligence. Nvidia makes the chips that have for now put the United States ahead. To keep it that way, Washington bars Nvidia from selling chips to China.

Enter Alice Huang, a Chinese citizen who is an executive at a Singapore-based data-center company called Megaspeed. It’s unclear when she first met Huang from Nvidia, but in 2024 they were photographed together at a bar in Taipei as Megaspeed prepared to spend $2 billion on Nvidia chips. Investigators from the U.S. Commerce Department were interested in that: Was Megaspeed helping China sidestep American export restrictions? Whom did she really work for? (Alice Huang has not responded to multiple attempts to reach her for comment in recent days.)

U.S. officials concluded she was recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security to gather information on the American C.E.O. and potentially to influence his company to funnel chips to China. That’s not how America wins the global competition for dominance of A.I...

There could be political fallout as well. Huang is a close ally of President Trump. He is also friendly with the Chinese, whom he told Bloomberg are “not our enemies.” Last year, he persuaded the president to roll back some of the ban on chip sales to China, after which Nvidia sold its second-most valuable chip there. (The U.S. government took a 25 percent cut of the sales.) And Nvidia has given at least $20 million to Trump’s ballroom fund."