Congress Is Doing Little to Prepare for Potential A.I. Job Losses; The New York Times, May 5, 2026

 Ben Casselman and Tony Romm, The New York Times; Congress Is Doing Little to Prepare for Potential A.I. Job Losses

"Economists aren’t sure if or when artificial intelligence will cause widespread job losses. But they do agree on one thing: The federal safety net isn’t ready for such a shock.

The nearly century-old unemployment system, which provides out-of-work Americans with up to 26 weeks of benefits in most states, is unlikely to cover many of the workers who are most at risk of being displaced by A.I., labor experts warn.

Job-retraining programs and other forms of aid designed for an earlier era of displaced workers haven’t been updated for the current threat or, in some cases, have lapsed altogether. And Republicans in Congress last year made it more difficult for people without jobs to receive the food assistance and health care benefits that are meant to be the last line of defense for struggling families.

The bottom line: If droves of Americans are disrupted by technology and turn to the government for help, they may find the aid insufficient — or, worse yet, be ineligible to receive it."

The Secret Weapon Against AI Dominance; The Atlantic, April 30, 2026

 Jacob Noti-Victor and Xiyin Tang, The Atlantic; The Secret Weapon Against AI Dominance

"More than 90 lawsuits have been filed by creators against AI companies for copyright infringement. Authors, musicians, visual artists, and news publishers have all accused firms such as OpenAI, Meta, and Anthropic of using their copyrighted works to train AI models without permission. (The Atlantic is involved in one such lawsuit, against the AI firm Cohere.) These cases are frequently framed as the defining fight over the future of creative labor and the entertainment industry as a whole. As one of these lawsuits put it, artists are seeking to end “infringement of their rights before their professions are eliminated by a computer program powered entirely by their hard work.”

But the future of creative labor will more likely be decided through a different question within copyright law, one that has received far less attention: To what extent should AI-generated works receive copyright protection at all? In a 2024 case, Thaler v. Perlmutter, the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held that a work generated autonomously by an AI system cannot be protected by copyright, because copyright requires a human “author.” The Supreme Court declined to review that decision in March. With the lower-court decision left in place, the question now becomes how much AI content can be incorporated into a work before it becomes mostly or totally uncopyrightable; courts have not yet weighed in on this but may soon.

The Thaler decision (and any future decisions that refine it) will have major economic consequences for the creative industries and the workers they employ."

‘The cost of compute is far beyond the costs of the employees’: Nvidia executive says right now AI is more expensive than paying human workers; Fortune, April 28, 2026

Sasha Rogelberg, Fortune ; ‘The cost of compute is far beyond the costs of the employees’: Nvidia executive says right now AI is more expensive than paying human workers

"Recent tech layoffs would initially appear to indicate the great labor shift from human workers to AI may already be happening."

A town of 7,000 planned so many data centers, it’s like adding 51 Walmarts; The Washington Post, April 26, 2026

Tim Craig, The Washington Post ; A town of 7,000 planned so many data centers, it’s like adding 51 Walmarts

"Throughout Archbald, a northeastern Pennsylvania town of 7,000 people tucked in a valley near the Pocono Mountains, residents are asking similar questions as the community emerges as one of the latest frontiers in the nation’s increasingly chaotic battles over data centers.

Developers plan to build six of the sprawling campuses in Archbald to power the demand for artificial intelligence, eventually covering about 14 percent of the town’s land. Those campuses would include 51 data warehouses — each about the size of a Walmart Supercenter — including seven buildings encompassing more than a million square feet near Bachak’s home...

Three of the four council members who resigned have now been replaced by data center opponents, with one seat still vacant.

It could be months or years before any data centers are built in Archbald. Once plans are approved by the local planning board, state and local permits are needed before construction can start...

Larry West, a local activist and new borough council member, said the tree cutting revived the “wounds” and “hidden scars” in a community where it took decades for the coal dust to be cleared. The town’s trees, West noted, cover abandoned mines.

“Now, it’s happening again but this time it’s data centers,” he added.

Bachak also believes his property will never be the same, even if the Project Gravity site is never completed. He recently installed blinds on his enclosed patio in an attempt to dull the pain he felt whenever he looked out at what used to be the forest lining his backyard.

“No one wants this,” Bachak said, “except the people making money off it.”"

Thousands of CEOs admit AI had no impact on employment or productivity—and it has economists resurrecting a paradox from 40 years ago; Fortune, April 19, 2026

  

Sasha Rogelberg

, Fortune; Thousands of CEOs admit AI had no impact on employment or productivity—and it has economists resurrecting a paradox from 40 years ago

"In 1987, economist and Nobel laureate Robert Solow made a stark observation about the stalling evolution of the Information Age: Following the advent of transistors, microprocessors, integrated circuits, and memory chips of the 1960s, economists and companies expected these new technologies to disrupt workplaces and result in a surge of productivity. Instead, productivity growth slowed, dropping from 2.9% from 1948 to 1973, to 1.1% after 1973."

As AI pushes students to reconsider majors, universities struggle to adapt; The Hill, April 12, 2026

 LEXI LONAS COCHRAN  , The Hill; As AI pushes students to reconsider majors, universities struggle to adapt

"A recent poll shows AI’s increasing role in how students decide on college majors, creating a rapidly developing situation for universities that are still struggling to determine how the technology will shape higher education. 

The Lumina Foundation-Gallup 2026 State of Higher Education survey found 47 percent of currently enrolled college students have thought about switching majors “a great deal” or a “fair amount” over AI concerns." 

Mother and Daughter Rejected $26M Offer to Sell Farmland to Build 2,000-Acre Data Center, but Say Others Haven’t; People, March 26, 2026

Karla Marie Sanford

Karla Marie Sanford

Karla Marie Sanford has contributed to PEOPLE since 2026. Her work has previously appeared on the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, and New York Times.

PEOPLE EDITORIAL GUIDELINES, 

, People ; Mother and Daughter Rejected $26M Offer to Sell Farmland to Build 2,000-Acre Data Center, but Say Others Haven’t

“They call us old stupid farmers, you know, but we’re not,” said Ida Huddleston, 82

"A Kentucky mother and daughter are continuing to open up about their decision to keep their farmland rather than accept a multi-million payout that could pave the way for a data center, which may still be happening anyway.

“My grandfather and great-grandfather and a whole bunch of family have all lived here for years, paid taxes on it, fed a nation off of it,” Delsia Bare told CBS affiliate WKRC. “Even raised wheat through the Depression and kept bread lines up in the United States of America when people didn’t have anything else.”

Bare and her 82-year-old mom Ida Huddleston own hundreds of acres of farmland outside Maysville, according to WKRC. Together, the two have rejected over $26 million to sell part of the farmland to an undisclosed Fortune 100 company."