One article, report or debate, laid out. Newest first.
WorkSeptember 29, 2026
Optimists, skeptics and the data
An experimental economist, a founder who automated his own company, a Wall Street chief executive and a Stanford economist on what happens to human work as AI improves, set against a WSJ survey of sixteen economists and the latest labor-market evidence.
Society & IdeasSeptember 18, 2026
Chatbots, skepticism, the August backlash, and how 36 other countries compare
About half of U.S. adults now use AI chatbots, and most expect AI to do more harm than good. Pew's February survey of 5,119 adults, what has changed since, and where Americans sit among 37 countries.
Policy & SafetyAugust 7, 2026
Seven threads, and one unanswered question
April through July 2026, when AI went from a story about capability to one about accountability. Seven threads drawn from the daily news digest and a quarterly industry briefing, with a 21-minute audio brief.
WorkAugust 5, 2026
Two studies, one finding
A field experiment at Procter & Gamble and OpenAI's study of 800,000+ workplace ChatGPT messages reach the same finding from opposite directions: with AI, people increasingly do work that belongs to other specialties.
Policy & SafetyJune 23, 2026
AI moves in months and legislation takes years. Two answers to that mismatch read side by side, from two crossbench peers in The Economist and from Dean Ball, with where they converge and clash.
Policy & SafetyJune 21, 2026
Containing a misaligned AI agent
Google DeepMind's framework for an uncomfortable question: what if an AI agent working inside the lab is quietly working against it? It borrows cybersecurity's assume-breach mindset and sets out defenses that escalate as models get stronger.
MarketsJune 8, 2026
About 1,200 days after ChatGPT, the gains are real but have not shown up in economy-wide productivity data. A WSJ field report on why, and on how long transformative technologies have taken before.
WorkJune 6, 2026
Earned optimism, unspared warnings
Stanford's Erik Brynjolfsson sees productivity gains coming and value that GDP misses, and also capabilities advancing faster than institutions can adapt. Six claims he can back with data.
Society & IdeasMay 25, 2026
Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical
The first encyclical to put artificial intelligence at its center treats AI as a moral question rather than a regulatory one. Its structure, its red line on lethal decisions, and its place in Catholic social teaching.
Society & IdeasMay 13, 2026
Ryan Holiday brings Stoic philosophy to the AI moment and argues that the questions that feel unprecedented have been asked before. Four ideas from the conversation.