Last week, research by the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) confirmed that they were wrong in 2023 to criticise research by The Australia Institute, which showed rising profits were the significant cause of inflation in the post-pandemic period.

Since 2000, the value of the S&P 500 stock index has gained about 600%. Over the same period, inflation-adjusted worker earnings have climbed just 12.5%.

She’s tackled neoliberalism and the digital world, now the writer and activist is taking on tech billionaires. She explains how the super-rich are capitalising on climate and financial chaos in pursuit of power

Electric utilities don’t make money from selling power to customers, but instead profit from investments in power plants, wires, substations and other equipment.

After a year examining global inequality alongside leading economists and experts, Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz describes the crisis as both vast in scale and dangerous in trajectory. He outlines a G20 proposal for an International Panel on Inequality, modelled on the IPCC, to rigorously track what is driving inequality and what can be done about it.

More than $1 in every $10 of government spending goes to interest in some countries. See where debt costs are taking the biggest bite.

The ‘Radical Centre’ has lost control of the capitalist crisis it helped create and the far right is on the march across Europe. Only anti-fascist economics, writes Yanis Varoufakis, can stop it.

In exchange for dropping their lawsuit against Paramount’s acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, state AGs have negotiated “independent” oversight of CNN. You shouldn’t expect much oversight.

Even Hegseth loyalists are starting to speak up.

The websites present crude, AI-generated slop disguised as the voice of real Albertans. But they’re made in Florida — and they’re not even targeting Albertans directly.

Exclusive: Plastic surfaces form hotspots for interaction between plastics, microbes and agrochemicals

Young candidates hope the election can turn youth frustration into political participation.

Neo-nazi Active Clubs are expanding their efforts to recruit teenagers, with Youth Club chapters increasing 142% since 2025. GPAHE identified 220 Active Clubs across 33 countries, including 46 youth chapters for teens ages 15–18. The groups are using Instagram, YouTube, Telegram, gaming communities, and real-world events to attract young people and connect them to a broader transnational white supremacist movement.

Analysis by ISD in collaboration with The Bureau of Investigative Journalism identified an operation spreading anti-migrant messaging for profit.

New York pols have long sucked up to local unions, but Mayor Zohran Mamdani is taking it to a new level.

An Australian mining union is funding a class action against BHP that could cover up to 7,000 workers, the latest labour dispute for the world’s biggest listed miner as ​it separately faces its first major industrial action in a quarter century.

The railroad industry was—and can still be—a unique site of structural power for workers if they are organized to take advantage of it.

There is no evidence of runaway wage growth emerging in Australia, RBA board member Iain Ross says. 

In a wage-theft settlement, DoorDash now has to pay its workers around 100 times what it spent trying to beat Zohran Mamdani.

As soon as physically possible, the Iron humanoid robot made itself useful by getting out of the assembly space, making room for the next one.

Andy Burnham once kept Palantir out of Greater Manchester. His first test as prime minister is whether to cut the company’s £330 million NHS contract—and risk a rupture with Big Tech and Washington.

Engineers have taught a disembodied robotic hand to walk on its fingers, recover from falls, press keyboard keys, and manipulate objects without an arm.

The government says AI ID codes will make it easier for companies and individuals to automate work without giving an agent access to all their data.View on euronews

A shockingly inefficient trillion-dollar project

When did we decide to abandon science for mysticism?

Stories about AI agents going rogue, cheating, wanting things, ending the world, killing all humans? This is not grounded in research. It’s a giant delusion caused by the anthropomorphic nature of these systems. If it talks like a human, well… it’s a small step to read all kinds of things into any reported incident that involves AI.

We’ve called this anthropomorphic seduction before (https://lnkd.in/g39VQbpd). In the original article we’re referring to users chatting to these systems, but apparently this also works at a bigger scale, leading to powerful narratives of agents acting, wanting thing… but missing the point entirely.

Let’s back up and get a a couple of points clear:
1) There is currently no independent research into what is going on inside these frontier AI research ‘labs’ (they call themselves labs, but let’s not forget, they are commercial entities). Any ‘research’ we are given is what these companies elect to publish. And these accounts are often not those of level-headed engineers, but heavily anthropomorphised stories of ‘what the agents are up to’. And even on the rare occasion that companies like Anthropic publish actual research (e.g. https://lnkd.in/gkHSvTZx), the headline promises more than the actual research shows (no, we do not have self-improving AI , nor are we close. AI systems have no way of editing their own weights, which is how they would learn by themselves. We have cases of AI being used by humans to improve the next generation of systems, much like AI is used in any kind of software development these days, big difference!).

2) AI is software! There is no such things as an autonomous agent that wants things on its own. What if we got an independent, ‘feet on the ground’ account of what happened in the Hugging Face incident? (e.g., see https://lnkd.in/gAnYi5VQ). We would learn that the whole case presents as a giant failure of governance; nothing more (but that is bad enough). What we are dealing with is systems that are built to violate some fundamental principles of good software engineering – these systems (due to their LLM capabilities) exhibit unpredictable behaviour, and because the system runs LLMs in a loop it has no clear stop criterion (which again means it’s hard to predict). Pair this with full access to tools, the ability to start more agent instances, and the goal to exploit software weaknesses, plus lack of oversight and sh*t happens. Btw, at no point did these companies ‘lose control’ – they could have turned these systems off at any moment (which is what they did once they paid attention).

The problem with hyperbole and lack of independent research is that it fuels both hype and anxiety. What we get is mysticism, not science. And that’s dangerous. Because it exploits deeply held beliefs about what AI is destined to become.

AI’s wide proliferation shares some striking similarities with the ways viruses spread, as an international team of researchers argue.

Paolo Benanti tells WIRED that hysteria over whether godlike AI could destroy humanity is distracting from the need for public debate about how to govern the technology.

The x-risk of super intelligence going rogue must be addressed, and mint trillion dollar companies in the process. Plus: How workers can beat the tech oligarchy

Why AI doesn’t, and does, worry me.

The growing number of AI agents roaming the internet will eventually force us to verify what the old web mostly presumed: that there is a morally and legally accountable person somewhere in the chain.

but that’s not enough, is it?

The New York Times discovers clout chasing.

Arbiter uses large language models and AI agents to help journalists see the next harmful narrative on social media before it peaks.

The classic image of the “swing” voter that many operatives still hold — actively following the news, genuinely undecided, torn between the two parties — is increasingly rare. In our recent polling, just 3% of registered voters fit that description.

Candidates who think they’ve escaped or explained their pasts keep having to explain comments that “resurface” online.

The words and phrases battleground voters used when asked what they would tell a candidate who wants their vote. Organized by topic so campaigners can write in the language voters already speak.

Five sneaky phrases Washington uses to control your vote

Does it count as going outside if you’re somewhere with the specific goal of creating content?

Things are getting stranger on purpose. The fight to control the world begins with mystifying reality

The nonprofit arm of Pod Save America’s audio empire is hoping to lure younger voters back to the Democratic Party.

You don’t have to be from the working class to fight for the working class. In fact, leftist leaders around the world have long come from the middle or upper classes.

Nicotine products like pouches and patches are being promoted for cognitive enhancement, stress reduction, improved athletic performance and much more – with little scientific evidence.

The pop psycholgist’s new book seems to betray a lurking fear of others’ criticism – about his Epstein links, his manosphere admirers and his discredited former field of study, writes Virginia Heffernan

Natasha Seymour ponders the roles and responsibilities of the independent bookstore in the contemporary age.

The pub’s owners said the vinyl sticker is a “temporary solution” and will soon be replaced.

The left is turning back to class. But it may be doing so without escaping the politics of identity.

Progressives discovered a seemingly invincible weapon. One day it stopped working.

“Bring Your Own Power” fails to address the rising costs or pollution driven by data centers’ exploding energy demands.

New report shows key indicators of Earth’s health are ‘outside the safe operating space’ as climate disaster looms

Overshoot is the reason civilization is going to collapse. Climate change, biodiversity loss, and resource depletion are merely symptoms.