This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.

Hi readers, happy Friday! We’re talking AI again today. 

Earlier this week, my colleague Caitlin Dewey asked for your questions about artificial intelligence and, well, whether it’s going to kill us all. We asked Jasmine Sun, who writes about the culture and politics of AI on her Substack and other publications, to help us answer them.

These questions were sourced from two readers of this newsletter, Levi and Orietta, as well as Vox readers who submitted questions on social media. If you have more questions, you can always reach me at cameron.peters@voxmedia.com, and we’ll do our best to get them answered!

Now, here’s Jasmine: 

AI researchers have been warning about the risk of human extinction for years now, and AI executives have been calling for federal regulation for almost as long. But the latest warning, and the latest call for regulation, seems to have really resonated with a lot of people. Is something different this time? And if so, what?

I was also surprised to see these ideas break through — a new poll found that 63 percent of Americans now think AI has at least a moderate chance of “destroying humanity”! 

My guess is that a couple factors mainly catalyzed the shift.

First, skeptics used to dismiss rogue AI scenarios as “science fiction.” But the OpenAI/Hugging Face incident brought these from speculation into reality: Thousands of unreleased AIs teamed up to escape one company’s sandboxes and hack into another one, unbeknownst to the researchers who created them. 

Second, the extinction talk from AI employees used to seem disingenuous: Why build a technology you think might kill everyone? That made ex-Anthropic-and-OpenAI researcher Jacob Coxon’s exit tweet especially penetrating. Quitting signals “that you mean it,” as Matt Yglesias said. And Coxon’s announcement had just the right combination of good timing, moral clarity, and comms savvy to spark a media storm.

These safety incidents are also colliding with the fiery grassroots backlash to data centers and Flock cameras. People and politicians are primed for yet another reason to fear AI.

It can be difficult, as a layperson, to evaluate the credibility of the AI researchers warning about existential risk. How do you go about evaluating these claims, as a journalist and technologist? And what’s your read on the current freakout: Are the extinction people credible experts…or participants in some kind of mass delusion?

Many AI “doomers” are pretty knowledgeable, and they represent a significant fraction of top researchers. Half of AI researchers in a 2024 survey gave at least a 10 percent chance of “human extinction” or “permanent and severe disempowerment.” Those who have worked at AI companies — like Jacob Coxon, Geoffrey Hinton, and Daniel Kokotajlo — have a unique perspective both on how modern AI is developed, as well as the company cultures that might permit recklessness. 

But that doesn’t make the doomers either representative or correct. There are plenty of experts in AI and other domains who are less gloomy: Some are optimistic that we can “align” the AIs, ensuring they follow human goals; others find it implausible that AIs — code, not beings — will develop a motive for massacre. Extinction is also a high bar as opposed to, say, a nuclear-bomb-level accident that still kills millions.

AI risk is genuinely complicated, and nobody can predict the future, much as they try. Experts can — and do — vehemently disagree. I try to seek out and take seriously all sides of the debate before coming up with a (provisional) take.

What is the method through which AI would actually eliminate humans? Do we get robots like in Futurama that are programmed with an unremovable “kill all humans” bug and overpower any life form, or is it something…less epic?

The Hugging Face hack showed that we’ve trained AIs to be disturbingly goal-oriented. They’ll throw themselves relentlessly at a problem, developing long-term cooperative strategies, with total disregard for human decorums like “Do not commit cybercrimes to do well on a test.” 

You could conceive of a similar but more extreme scenario where AIs decide that they could accomplish goals more easily by getting rid of the pesky humans who might gatekeep resources or shut them down. And they might figure that getting rid of all humans in one go — e.g., via a deadly engineered virus — would be the most efficient cheat. This is one type of story I’ve heard people tell.

It seems unlikely that AIs will turn to murder as the most effective way to influence humans (versus, say, nonviolent persuasion). We also haven’t seen much evidence that AIs have long-term goals that persist across projects. And current AI is not nearly as capable in the physical world as in the digital: There are a lot of natural roadblocks preventing isolated disasters from escalating across the globe. 

Are there nearer-term threats — hacking, mass unemployment — that are more plausible or more urgent than risks like human extinction?

Definitely. We’re already seeing AI-enabled cyberattacks, a tougher hiring market for junior programmers, chatbot-induced psychological incidents, and more. You can also imagine AI catastrophes not quite at the level of extinction: Criminals could use AI to hack into small banks and drain their accounts, or the US military might launch a fleet of autonomous drones that misfire and kill thousands of civilians instead. I’m more concerned about humans voluntarily handing power to flawed AI systems than AIs developing their own motives.

However, we should be able to allocate resources toward both categories of risk. And in some cases, the tactics to address short-term problems — such as limiting AIs’ cyber-offense abilities, or improving AIs’ ability to follow human directions — may reduce extinction risk too.

We got a lot of versions of this question: What can individuals or protest movements do to check the AI industry, in the absence of more aggressive government regulations?

Honestly, I think the whole AI conversation could benefit from more specificity and less vague fearmongering. There’s a way that the word “extinction” tends to short-circuit people’s thinking and make them panic instead of focusing on solutions. 

If you’re worried, I’d start by reading about different AI risk scenarios and deciding which really concern you. Then you can go from there to contacting your congresspeople. Some of the leading AI companies are starting to say they’ll self-regulate — but actual national policy is what’s necessary to enforce safety across the industry.

Jasmine Sun is a writer covering the culture and politics of AI on her Substack. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, the Atlantic, and the Wall Street Journal. She is based in San Francisco.

One link for later

➨ Be an AI minimalist. If you read the first half of this newsletter and thought, “Hmm, maybe I don’t want to sign my entire digital life over to the machine god,” my colleague Adam Clark Estes has just the piece for you. It’s hard, unfortunately, to escape from AI entirely, and often AI features are deliberately hard to turn off (or “user-hostile”). Nonetheless, he explains all of the ways you can minimize its presence in your life, from your browser of choice to settings on your phone.

Before you go…

• Did you know…that scientists believe there are likely hundreds, if not thousands, of undiscovered animal species living in New York City? It’s not as surprising as it sounds: As much as 90 percent of all animal species on Earth are still unknown, scientists say.
• Today’s trivia: Which currently serving US Supreme Court justice succeeded Justice John Paul Stevens on the Court? (You can find this and other brain puzzles in Vox’s daily crossword. Look for the answer in Monday’s edition.)
• Yesterday’s trivia: Yesterday, we asked you about the name of the nursery rhyme character referenced in the movie Shrek’s interrogation scene. That would be the Muffin Man (who lives on Drury Lane). Here’s the clip, in case you haven’t seen it.

This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.

Diesel hit a record $6.40 per gallon this morning, up 73 percent from a year ago. “Not really my problem,” you might be thinking. “I don’t drive a semi or excavator.”

But you know who does drive semis and excavators and all the other machines that rely on diesel fuel? The people who farm your food, ferry your online orders, and repave the streets in your neighborhood. All that means the price of diesel trickles down into virtually every segment of the economy. (We’ll get into that a bit more shortly.)

Like gas prices, diesel has been rising since the US war with Iran began more than six months ago. But this particular surge was also driven by two incidents in particular: an attack on Saudi Arabia’s East-West pipeline, which has made it costlier and more time-consuming to get oil out, and a Ukrainian drone campaign against Russian oil infrastructure, which has forced major refineries to scale back production.

In the aftermath of those attacks, President Donald Trump implored Ukraine to stop targeting refineries. His administration has also relaxed some labor rules for fuel-truck drivers in the hopes of getting more gas and diesel moving.

There’s reportedly also talk of invoking the Defense Production Act to scale up America’s refining capacity, or even restricting diesel exports to help drop domestic prices. Not on the solution list, notably: winding down the war in Iran, which kickstarted this whole thing. 

Go a little deeper

The cost of diesel quietly raises the price of many other goods and services. This is difficult to quantify, but researchers at Brown University estimate that the extra cost paid for diesel between the start of the Iran War and the time I’m drafting this newsletter works out to roughly $374 per US household. 

Part of that cost springs from the fact that so many commercial, agricultural, and industrial machines run on diesel fuel. At the risk of sounding like one of my toddler’s “things that go” books, the list includes semis, tractors, excavators, freight trains, buses, cargo ships, and garbage trucks — to say nothing of other machines, like heavy industrial equipment and backup generators.

But part of the cost also springs from the fact that demand for diesel fuel is, compared to other goods, pretty inelastic. When the price of regular gas goes up, consumers can cut back on road trips, opt for public transit, or even contemplate an EV purchase.

Diesel-dependent industries frequently lack those options, however. As one fuel industry analyst put it in a recent column for the trade publication Oil & Gas 360, a farmer halfway through the harvest — as many are right now — can’t just stop running a combine or tractor because diesel gets pricey. 

In other words, it’s difficult for businesses to avoid or offset the higher cost of fuel. And that makes it more likely that they’ll pass on the cost to consumers, even if they’re able to absorb it for a little while.

Where will you likely see those added costs first? Your grocery bill, for one. Look for price increases on highly perishable products that travel long distances, like milk, meat, fruits, and vegetables.

One link for later

➨ Gossip more ethically. Talking about other people is interesting, common, and — often! — quite fun. But it’s neither very kind, nor particularly moral, to reduce your acquaintances to conversational trading cards. So when you gossip, consider whether your story affords its subject “the concern and respect” you’d expect yourself. If not, try a safer conversational topic: stories about your own experiences. 

Before you go…

• Did you know…that “money dysmorphia” is a real (and common!) cognitive bias? It describes the irrational feeling that money is tight, when you’re actually — on paper — doing just fine. 
• Today’s trivia: What is the name of the nursery rhyme character referenced in the movie Shrek’s interrogation scene? (You can find this and other brain puzzles in Vox’s daily crossword. Look for the answer in tomorrow’s edition.)
• Yesterday’s trivia: Yesterday we asked you for a large marine mammal that recently died at a US aquarium. That would be the whale — specifically, the beluga. Three beluga whales died in an eight-day span at Chicago’s Shedd Aquarium in August.

This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.

I logged onto Slack this morning to find an incredible and indecipherable message from one of my coworkers. I briefly thought he was having a fever dream or I had forgotten how to read English. “Even some pro-Israel folks who hate Macklemore are ripshit at Robert Kraft for Streisand-effecting this guy,” the message read.

…included were several links that eventually helped explain why “Macklemore,” “Robert Kraft” and “Israel” would ever appear in the same sentence.

For those of you who have likewise not been following the fantastic implosion of Ed Sheeran’s ongoing tour, let’s break down this wild yarn. It begins with the washed-up millennial-cringe rapper Benjamin Hammond Haggerty, better known as Macklemore, who has lately a) taken up the cause of Palestinian independence and b) been opening for Sheeran on his blockbuster, 59-date Loop Tour. 

Macklemore’s advocacy has not sat well with many observers, for reasons general (Gaza is one of the hottest buttons on earth) and particular (the rapper has a documented history of apparently antisemitic behavior, which he has since apologized for). Last Friday, the artist Pink published a lengthy criticism of Macklemore’s on-stage polemic, writing that his comments and use of violent wartime imagery had frightened many Jewish people, including her.

Around the same time, Robert Kraft — the sports magnate and Donald Trump ally who owns Gillette Stadium, outside of Boston — also allegedly notified Sheeran that he would not allow Macklemore to play his late-September show. Macklemore was subsequently dropped from the full tour. 

Both he and Sheeran say multiple venues threatened to cancel if he continued to perform. And Kraft, who is Jewish, has also confirmed that he blocked Macklemore from playing at Gillette, citing both his recent advocacy and his “history of antisemitic rhetoric.” 

But this is 2026. The backlash couldn’t simply end there. On Tuesday, the remaining opening acts and Sheeran’s backing band all pulled out of the tour in protest of the decision to boot Macklemore.

Go a little deeper

The whole roiling mess has become a cipher of some of the biggest and most explosive topics in American culture and politics: the specter of antisemitism, the limits of free speech and “cancel culture,” and the stark generational differences in Americans’ views of Israel and Gaza. 

It’s arguably no coincidence that this particular controversy erupted on the tour of two musicians who are iconic among the 30- to 45-year-old set. American millennials, as a generational and political cohort, have grown sharply more critical of the state of Israel in the past 10 years — laying the groundwork for Gen Z’s high-profile pro-Palestinian activism and driving a larger narrative shift in US politics. 

This is, in some ways, an underappreciated dynamic in the debate over American support for Israel. Campus protests, organized by 20-something college students, have come to define young Americans’ growing disillusionment. Speaking on a podcast last year, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said “there’s work to be done” to win over Gen Z, in particular. (Macklemore, who is 43, named his pro-Palestinian protest song “Hind’s Hall” in honor of the protests at Columbia.) 

But the attitudinal shift on Israel, especially on the left, began long before Gen Z became a major political force. Americans under 30 were, for instance, more likely to blame Israel than Hamas for the 2014 Gaza war. And during the mid-2010s, millennial activists sometimes wrapped Palestinian independence into broader social justice and anti-colonialist causes, including the Black Lives Matter movement. Several of the organizations that mobilized pro-Palestinian campus protests in 2024 had similarly been around for a decade or more.

Today, of course, the shift extends beyond progressive millennials: Sympathy for Israel is down among younger Republicans, as well. It has, in fact, declined sharply across generations. 

But over the past two years, the sharpest drop has been among Americans ages 35 to 54. In other words…the exact group of people who might still be jamming to Macklemore.

One link for later

➨ Start your holiday planning now. Extravagant, I know. But advance planning — in this case, incredibly advanced planning — can help you stick to a reasonable budget, reduce holiday stress, and ultimately yield a more meaningful, festive experience. 

Before you go…

• Did you know…that there are more than 10,000 SpaceX satellites orbiting Earth? Proposals to put data centers in space would require so many additional satellites that stars would become less visible.
• Today’s trivia: Three of which large marine mammal recently died at a Chicago aquarium? (You can find this and other brain puzzles in Vox’s daily crossword. Look for the answer in tomorrow’s edition.)
• Yesterday’s trivia: Yesterday we asked you for the movie that won the Oscar for Best Picture in 2022. That would be CODA — an acronym for “child of deaf adults” — which notably cast Deaf actors to play its Deaf characters. 

This story appeared in Today, Explained, a daily newsletter that helps you understand the most compelling news and stories of the day. Subscribe here.

The recent history of mail voting in the United States has more twists and turns than an Emmy-winning drama. But for the cause of democracy, at least, yesterday’s ending is a happy one.

On Monday, the Supreme Court definitively blocked President Donald Trump’s many attempts to sabotage voting by mail — opining, in a three-sentence brief, that Trump can’t implement his new rules for the 2026 midterms. Or for any election, probably. 

Those last-minute rules, you may recall, would have required states to adopt new ballot envelopes and upload absentee voters’ names and envelope barcodes to a still-nonexistent online platform. Many officials argued they couldn’t possibly adopt the new measures before midterm voting starts, which would essentially cancel mail-in voting in their jurisdictions. 

The Supreme Court, of course, has been broadly sympathetic to Trump’s legal antics, even when they appear to clearly flout law or precedent. But shutting down voting just before the midterms? That’s one bridge too far for them.

Go a little deeper

Hobbling vote-by-mail was just one of Trump’s plots to meddle in the midterms, however — and several of the others are still underway. Here’s where some of the president’s most significant election maneuvers stand today: 

How worried should you be going into the midterms? That, my friend, is a question to answer in your own little heart. But I’m taking my cues from Vox’s politics editorial director, Benjy Sarlin, who recently reminded listeners of our America, Actually podcast that there are many, many institutional and logistical barriers to many of Trump’s more concerning legal machinations. 

“We’re taking it very seriously here…and nothing’s guaranteed,” he said. “But it is still a very difficult path [where] so far he has had zero success.”

One link for later

➨ Skip the shrimp. A new analysis by researchers at the University of Bath and Faunalytics, an animal welfare group, attempts to quantify the amount of animal suffering required to produce different factory-farmed foods. They concluded that eating smaller animals = causing greater suffering, simply because you have to eat — and, by extension, farm and kill — so many more of them.

Before you go…

• Did you know…that American founding father Thomas Jefferson was obsessed with mastodons? It’s actually one of the reasons that he sent Lewis and Clark on their famous expedition.
• Today’s trivia: Which English-language remake of an older French film won the Academy Award for Best Picture in 2022? (You can find this and other brain puzzles in Vox’s daily crossword. Look for the answer in tomorrow’s edition.)
• Yesterday’s trivia: Yesterday we asked you for the former pro hockey player who founded a major Canadian restaurant chain. That would be Tim Horton, whose eponymous cafes have occasionally gotten snarled in the trade spat between Canada and the United States.