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Vox
5 hours ago
- Politics
- Vox
The absurd fight over Trump's MAGA prosecutor in New Jersey, explained
is a senior correspondent at Vox, where he focuses on the Supreme Court, the Constitution, and the decline of liberal democracy in the United States. He received a JD from Duke University and is the author of two books on the Supreme Court. Alina Habba delivers remarks before being sworn in as the interim U.S. Attorney for New Jersey as U.S. President Donald Trump looks on in the Oval Office at the White House on March 28, 2025. Photo byAbout four months ago, Attorney General Pam Bondi appointed Alina Habba, one of Trump's personal lawyers, as the top federal prosecutor in New Jersey. Habba spent her brief tenure in office bringing dubious prosecutions and investigations against elected Democrats, including a failed prosecution of Newark Mayor Ras Baraka and an ongoing case against US Rep. LaMonica McIver. Prior to this appointment, Habba had no experience as a prosecutor. But Habba's appointment expires this week. And the Trump administration's ham-handed response to that expiration has created an awkward situation where it's not entirely clear who, if anyone, is currently the US Attorney in New Jersey. SCOTUS, Explained Get the latest developments on the US Supreme Court from senior correspondent Ian Millhiser. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. By law, Bondi only has the authority to appoint interim US Attorneys for 120 days. There is some dispute over whether this clock ran out on Tuesday or whether Habba remains in office through Friday, but the law is quite clear that Habba ceases to be US Attorney after time runs out. The same law states that once Habba's appointment expires, the federal district court in New Jersey 'may appoint a United States attorney to serve until the vacancy is filled' by a Senate-confirmed nominee (Trump nominated Habba to serve as US Attorney indefinitely, but that nomination is currently stalled due to opposition from both of New Jersey's Democratic senators). On Tuesday, New Jersey's federal judges issued a brief order announcing that Desiree Leigh Grace, a career prosecutor who previously served as Habba's first assistant — the No. 2 lawyer in the US Attorney's office — will replace Habba. Bondi responded with predictably Trumpian bluster, announcing that Grace 'has just been removed' and that DOJ 'does not tolerate rogue judges.' Let's dispel with the fiction that anyone has gone rogue here. While the Constitution requires top federal officials, such as cabinet secretaries, to be nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate, it permits lower-ranking officers such as US Attorneys to be appointed by 'the Courts of Law,' so long as Congress authorizes the courts to do so. Congress did, in fact, give courts the authority to make these appointments once a temporary US Attorney's 120-day tenure expires. So, legally speaking, everything is above board here. That said, federal law also permits the president to remove any sitting US Attorney. So, assuming that Trump actually signed the order removing Grace, she was lawfully removed. Trump cannot appoint a permanent replacement without the Senate's consent, but he can keep removing anyone the district court appoints who is not Alina Habba. The district judges have good reason to prefer a career prosecutor over Habba Habba didn't exactly distinguish herself during her time as Trump's personal lawyer. In 2022, for example, Habba represented Trump in a lawsuit against his 2016 presidential opponent, Hillary Clinton, that accused Clinton of 'racketeering' by linking Trump's campaign to Russia. A federal judge eventually determined that Trump 'deliberately misrepresented public documents,' that the suit was 'frivolous,' and that the allegations underlying the suit were 'political grievances masquerading as legal claims.' The judge ordered Habba, along with Trump's other lawyers, to pay monetary sanctions as a penalty. Habba's brief tenure as a federal prosecutor, moreover, was notable largely because of the high number of investigations and prosecutions she initiated against prominent elected Democrats. In May, for example, Mayor Baraka was arrested while protesting an immigrant detention facility. A federal magistrate judge labeled the charges against Baraka a 'worrisome misstep,' and Habba eventually backed down. Baraka is now suing Habba for 'malicious prosecution.' Habba also indicted Rep. McIver, who participated in the same protest. A federal law permits sitting members of Congress to enter federal immigration facilities as part of their oversight responsibilities. Habba, for what it is worth, claims that McIver assaulted law enforcement officers. Additionally, Habba opened a federal investigation into New Jersey's Democratic governor, Phil Murphy, and its Democratic attorney general, Matt Platkin, over a directive preventing state law enforcement officers from cooperating with federal immigration enforcement. Under the Supreme Court's 'anti-commandeering' doctrine, the federal government may not force states to enforce federal laws. As the Court said in Murphy v. NCAA in 2018, 'conspicuously absent from the list of powers given to Congress is the power to issue direct orders to the governments of the States.' Habba's authoritarian tendencies aside, she also has little professional experience that qualifies her to supervise federal prosecutors. Prior to her interim appointment, she'd never worked as a prosecutor. Nevertheless, during her time as interim US Attorney, Habba led an office with 170 lawyers. Before Trump, the Justice Department tried not to antagonize judges No party appears in federal court more than the United States. In 2021 alone, federal judges sentenced a convicted offender in 57,377 cases. That number doesn't include cases where a defendant was acquitted. It also does not include the many civil lawsuits where the United States is a party. In large part because of this huge caseload, Justice Department lawyers typically speak of federal judges with cautious professionalism. If DOJ antagonizes a particular judge today, that judge may hear hundreds of cases involving the United States before they leave the bench. Some of the biggest losers in this food fight between the Trump administration and the United States District Court for the District of New Jersey, in other words, are likely to be the career federal prosecutors who litigate in that court. Judges are likely to view the Justice Department's legal arguments with more skepticism now that the attorney general has frivolously accused them of going 'rogue' and usurping 'the President's core Article II powers.' Meanwhile, the simple fact remains that New Jersey's federal judges do not have confidence in Habba — to such a degree that they effectively chose to remove her from office and replace her with her deputy. So, these judges are also likely to cast a skeptical eye on the Justice Department's arguments if Habba remains as US Attorney.
Vox
12 hours ago
- General
- Vox
Everything we know about the Air India crash points to an uncomfortable truth
writes about pop culture, media, and ethics. Before joining Vox in 2016, they were a staff reporter at the Daily Dot. A 2019 fellow of the National Critics Institute, they're considered an authority on fandom, the internet, and the culture wars. The back of Air India flight 171 is pictured at the site after it crashed in a medical college's residential area near the airport in Ahmedabad on June 12, 2025. Sam Panthaky/AFP via Getty Images With 260 casualties and only one surviving passenger, the Air India 171 crash is one of the deadliest aviation incidents in recent history — and so far it's proving to be one of the most frustratingly opaque. Video of the June 12 incident had previously captured the Boeing 787 taking off successfully from Ahmedabad bound for London, only to rapidly descend, crash into a medical college complex, and explode into flames. The crash killed all but one of the plane's 242 occupants. It also damaged five buildings, killed 19 people on the ground, and injured over 60 more. The weeks that followed saw rampant speculation, AI-generated hoaxes, and conspiracy theories. Finally, on July 11 India's air safety organization, the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), issued a preliminary report into the cause of the disaster. The 15-page report pinpointed a dark and disturbing factor as the reason for the crash: Shortly after takeoff, someone or something cut the flow of fuel to both engines, almost simultaneously. This caused a brief but fatal dual engine shutdown that proved impossible for the plane to recover from. The implications of that double shutdown are quite bleak — but there's still a lot we don't know. Vox Culture Culture reflects society. Get our best explainers on everything from money to entertainment to what everyone is talking about online. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. What caused the crash? In the weeks following the tragedy, public speculation about the potential cause ranged from a bird strike to an electrical problem; some suggested fuel contamination, others a malfunction with the wing flaps. Many focused on what seemed to have been an extreme occurrence suggested by the visibility of the Ram Air Turbine (RAT), which deploys when there are engine problems: a total engine failure. Over on YouTube, many analyzed the crash, including some pilots. Among them was Trevor Smith, call sign 'Hoover,' a former military pilot who now flies for a commercial airline. On the side, he runs the YouTube crash analysis channel Pilot Debrief. Following the Air India crash, he emphasized what seemed to be the dual loss of thrust to both engines, and speculated that perhaps one engine had lost thrust for an unknown reason and that then one of the pilots had accidentally turned off the fuel control switch to the other engine, causing both to lose thrust. Smith was hypothesizing a scenario in which at least one engine had been lost due to a mechanical failure, and an overwhelmed pilot mistakenly deactivated the other engine. The preliminary report, however, was more grim. It rejected all of those possibilities and instead pointed firmly toward a simple but unthinkable event: Both engines were shut down, first one and then the other, by way of the fuel control cutoff switch. In most Boeing airplanes, the flow of fuel to the engines gets activated via two fuel control switches. In the Boeing 787, the jet fuel control switches sit in the main console of the aircraft just below the throttles (which are used to control thrust power). The fuel switches are not easy to engage by accident; they have a built-in spring-loaded locking mechanism that requires anyone using them to first pull up on the knobs, turn them slightly, and then maneuver them up or down into the position you want — a bit like a safety-proof lid on a pill bottle. Additionally, two raised metal guards on either side of the two switches protect against accidental bumping or jostling. The console of a Boeing 787. Paige Vickers; Vox/Getty Images There were no historical issues with the switches on this particular 787, and that section of the console had been refurbished as recently as 2023. Additionally, following the crash, other Air India Boeings were inspected, and no fuel switch issues were found with any of them. In a second inspection, Air India reportedly found no issues with the locking mechanisms on the switches either. This crucial context underscores both the reliability of the switches — they were functioning normally with no problems — and the guardrails that were in place to protect against any associated mishaps. With the metal guards and the locking mechanisms, it would be all but impossible for an accident to knock both switches into the cutoff position, especially at the same time. And yet what we know from the preliminary report is that the fuel cutoff switches were somehow switched from 'run' to 'cutoff' — from 'on' to 'off,' effectively. They were moved immediately after the airplane lifted off the ground and reached its maximum takeoff speed of 180 knots, or about 207 miles per hour. In a follow-up analysis video, Smith mapped out the timeline provided in the report, emphasizing that the two switches were turned off in quick succession, just a second apart — a short gap that makes sense, he noted, if someone were to move their hand from one switch to another. Without a fuel supply, the engines immediately lost power. The RAT began supplying hydraulic power to the plane a few seconds after the fuel was cut off. A few seconds after this, one or both pilots realized what had happened. They placed the switches back into the correct position about nine seconds after they were moved. The engines began to restart, but by the time they had recovered, it was already too late. Initial media reports claimed that whichever pilot made the mayday call to air traffic control had stated, 'Thrust not achieved,' as the explanation for the call shortly before losing contact. However, the investigative report didn't include this statement, and recordings from the cockpit have not been made public. What we do know is that according to the preliminary report, 'one of the pilots is heard asking the other why did he cut off [the fuel]. The other pilot responded that he did not do so.' So was the cutoff done intentionally? The preliminary report has drawn criticism for its vagueness, and for the lack of a direct transcript of the aforementioned moment from the cockpit recorder. The AAIB has also drawn fire for its decision not to issue any safety guidelines as a result of the early stages of its investigation. However, the report was clear that the investigation is ongoing, and multiple pilots associations have cautioned against speculating before all the facts are known. Still, through its inclusion of the cockpit exchange, the preliminary report indicates that one pilot realized the switches had been manually moved and questioned the other pilot about it before moving the switches back into the 'run' position. Given the virtual impossibility of an accidental dual cutoff, and the extreme unlikelihood of a dual engine shutdown being caused by any other issue, the pilot's implied assumption in the moment that his colleague had manually moved the switches himself seems reasonable. Following the report's release, the Wall Street Journal reported that the investigation was intensifying its focus on the captain, 56-year-old Sumeet Sabharwal. As the pilot monitoring, Sabharwal would likely have had his hands free during the takeoff, while the first officer, Clive Kunder, 32, would have been busy actually flying the plane. According to the Journal, the exchange referenced in the preliminary report involved Kunder querying Sabharwal about why the captain had moved the switches. In the following moments, Kunder 'expressed surprise and then panicked' while Sabharwal 'seemed to remain calm.' Of course, without video of the moment, and without knowing more about the closely held details of the investigation thus far, it's difficult to know what the situation in the cockpit truly was. It's possible that Kunder's panic and Sabharwal's calm reflected nothing more than their respective level of career experience. As Nathan Fielder's The Rehearsal recently explored, the power imbalance in a cockpit between a senior and a younger or less experienced pilot can have a huge impact on the outcome of a plane mishap. Yet in this case, it seems likely that even in a balanced co-piloting dynamic, nothing could have helped an unwary pilot predict, prevent, or recover from the engine failure. What do we know about the pilots and the airline? Sabharwal was a true veteran pilot, with over 15,000 career flight hours, nearly half of them piloting the 787. As a younger pilot, Kunder had just 3,400 hours of flight time, but over 1,100 of them were on the 787. It's been widely reported that Sabharwal was planning to retire soon to care for his ailing father, who himself was a career aviation ministry official. In reporting after the crash, he has been universally described by friends and colleagues as extremely kind, gentle, reserved, and soft-spoken. Kunder came from a family of pilots, went to flight school in Florida, and reportedly chose piloting over a career in esports because he loved to fly. Following the crash, the Telegraph quoted a source claiming that Sabharwal had struggled with depression and had taken mental health leave from the company. However, Air India's parent company, the Tata Group, contradicted this, with a spokesperson clarifying to the Telegraph that Sabharwal's last medical leave was a bereavement leave in 2022, and emphasizing that 'the preliminary report did not find anything noteworthy' in his recent medical history. If pilots don't get therapy, they could endanger themselves and others while in the air. But if they do get therapy, the airline could ground them. However, it could be very easy for mental health issues in pilots to go undetected and unreported. That's because the strict scrutiny and restrictions placed upon commercial pilots in the wake of the 2015 Germanwings tragedy — in which a pilot locked his co-pilot out of the cockpit and deliberately crashed the plane, killing everyone on board — creates a dangerous catch-22 for pilots: If they don't get thorough and regular mental health treatment, they could be endangering themselves and others when they're in the air. But if they do get mental health treatment, the airline could ground them, perhaps permanently. For pilots who love flying, it's a major risk assessment: Around 1,100 people have been killed because of plane crashes intentionally caused by pilots since 1982. The tragedy comes at a pivotal moment for both Air India and Boeing, which have each been attempting to rebound from criticism. Air India is one of the oldest and formerly one of the most influential airlines in the world, known for the opulence and exceptional artistic style it cultivated throughout the 20th century. After the company was nationalized in the 1950s, however, its once-sterling reputation significantly backslid, until it was finally re-privatized in 2022 and handed off to the Tata Group. The company's attempts to revitalize the airline have included investing billions in readying the company for an expanded fleet and a reentry into the global market — an expansion that could be jeopardized because of the high-profile nature of the June crash. India's civil aviation minister recently announced that the company has additionally received nine safety notices in the last six months. Meanwhile Boeing continues to face criticism in the face of ongoing safety and maintenance concerns, and recently agreed to pay over $1 billion to avoid criminal prosecution over two plane crashes linked to faulty flight control systems that resulted in the deaths of 346 people. While there's no indication yet that anything about the Air India crash was due to a defect in the plane, the optics won't help the beleaguered airline. Perhaps because the stakes are so high, multiple pilot organizations in India as well as a bevy of media commentators have resisted the preliminary report's implication that one of the pilots caused the crash. The Airline Pilots Association of India as well as the Indian Commercial Pilots Association both released statements criticizing the preliminary report and objecting to any presumption of guilt. Others have suggested an undetected issue with the plane might be at fault, or that the AAIB, which issued the preliminary report, might have something to hide.
Daily Mirror
13 hours ago
- Business
- Daily Mirror
Exact age you can get your state pension as millions set to work for longer
The state pension age is the earliest you can start claiming the state pension and it is separate to any workplace or private pension you may have The state pension age is set to start rising again from next year - so how old exactly will you be when you can start claiming it? The state pension age for men and women is currently 66 - but this is set to rise to 67 between 2026 and 2028. The first people to see their state pension age increase are those born between April 6, 1960 and May 5, 1960. If you are born between these dates, you won't be able to start claiming your state pension until you are age 66 and one month. The age will gradually keep increasing over the following year until the state pension age hits 67. Those born from April 1977 onwards are currently set to see their state pension age rise to 68. There have been calls to bring this forward, but a decision on this has been delayed. It comes after a major review into pension saving was announced this week, amid fears that today's workers face a greater risk of poverty in retirement. Work and Pensions Secretary Liz Kendall will revive the Pensions Commission, which last met in 2006, to look at ways to encourage workers to save more money for their retirement. Get the best deals and tips from Mirror Money WHATSAPP GROUP: Get money news and top deals straight to your phone by joining our Money WhatsApp group here. We also treat our community members to special offers, promotions, and adverts from us and our partners. If you don't like our community, you can check out any time you like. If you're curious, you can read our Privacy Notice. State pension age rising - see when you can retire The following timetable shows your date and birth and the age you will be when you can claim your state pension. It was published with the Pensions Act 2014. April 6, 1960 – May 5, 1960 - 66 years and 1 month May 6, 1960 – June 5, 1960 - 66 years and 2 months June 6, 1960 – July 5, 1960 - 66 years and 3 months July 6, 1960 – August 5, 1960 - 66 years and 4 months August 6, 1960 – September 5, 1960 - 66 years and 5 months September 6, 1960 – October 5, 1960 - 66 years and 6 months October 6, 1960 – November 5, 1960 - 66 years and 7 months November 6, 1960 – December 5, 1960 - 66 years and 8 months December 6, 1960 – January 5, 1961 - 66 years and 9 months January 6, 1961 – February 5, 1961 - 66 years and 10 months February 6, 1961 – March 5, 1961 - 66 years and 11 months March 6, 1961 – April 5, 1977 You can check your state pension age on by entering your date of birth. The state pension age is the earliest you can start claiming the state pension. It is separate to any workplace or private pension you may have. The earliest age you can access your private pensions is currently 55 - but this will rise to 57 from April 2028. Anyone retiring now will claim the new state pension, which is worth £221.20 a week if you're eligible for the full amount. Most people need 35 qualifying years on their National Insurance record to get the full amount. The state pension rises every year in line with the triple lock promise. Your state pension is separate to any private or workplace pension you may have.
Eater
5 days ago
- Business
- Eater
The Grocery Store That's Listening to Customers and Lowering Prices
is the lead editor of the Northeast region with more than 20 years of experience as a reporter, critic, editor, and cookbook author. Jubilee, a local New York grocery store chain, most known for its location in Greenpoint, has taken a brave and bold step by… listening to its customers. Young Kim's shop already had a loyal following that gained momentum over a year ago due to its wildly inexpensive (and actually good) $2.75 burger; later, Kim added equally affordable deals on rotisserie chicken and bibimbap buffet, particularly in its Fidi outpost. But some complained on channels like Reddit that, while the prepared foods deals couldn't be beat, the groceries — no matter how vast the selection (including New York-based brands otherwise hard to find) — were too high-priced. This week, Kim is making amends and posted to Instagram saying, 'I'm sorry for the shitty high prices and you were right. I thought I was putting the right mark up but if the majority of the community is saying it's too expensive, then it's too expensive, end of story.' The timing is spot-on: As consumers brace for another round of price hikes at all grocery stores – in part because of President Trump's whiplash tariffs – people are anxious. So far, Young has lowered some prices around his shop, but he has about '20,000 items' more. It's a move that caught the attention of the New York Times yesterday. 'Jubilee's prices tallied to $30 more expensive than a nearby chain store,' Kim told the publication. 'That's a number that you can't really ignore.' Will Kim be able to stay in business as he drops prices to match bigger stores? 'I don't know if he fully understands the consequences,' videographer Rob Martinez – who also sat down with Kim – told author Pete Wells, 'I assume he does.' Asian market chain 99 Ranch will debut in Flushing at 37-11 Main Street, between 37th and 38th avenues, on July 25. To celebrate the opening, the shop will have specials all weekend, as well as a lion dance and a ribbon-cutting ceremony. A smart rebrand After opening in February, Golden HOF and NY Kimchi — the combination, bi-level Korean restaurants near Rockefeller Center (16 W. 48th Street, near Fifth Avenue)— is simplifying. Owner Sam Yoo is taking two separate menus and folding items from both spots into a singular brand, calling the restaurant Golden Hof Korean Bar & Grill. The streamline will be easier for guests to understand, says Yoo, who also owns downtown's Golden Diner. Moving forward, it will be one menu on both floors – aside from the Korean barbecue, which will be in the grill room on the lower level. Eater NY All your essential food and restaurant intel delivered to you Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Vox
5 days ago
- Business
- Vox
You can get unfathomably rich building AI. Should you?
is a senior writer at Future Perfect, Vox's effective altruism-inspired section on the world's biggest challenges. She explores wide-ranging topics like climate change, artificial intelligence, vaccine development, and factory farms, and also writes the Future Perfect newsletter. It's a good time to be a highly in-demand AI engineer. To lure leading researchers away from OpenAI and other competitors, Meta has reportedly offered pay packages totalling more than $100 million. Top AI engineers are now being compensated like football superstars. Few people will ever have to grapple with the question of whether to go work for Mark Zuckerberg's 'superintelligence' venture in exchange for enough money to never have to work again (Bloomberg columnist Matt Levine recently pointed out that this is kind of Zuckerberg's fundamental challenge: If you pay someone enough to retire after a single month, they might well just quit after a single month, right? You need some kind of elaborate compensation structure to make sure they can get unfathomably rich without simply retiring.) Future Perfect Explore the big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them. Sent twice a week. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Most of us can only dream of having that problem. But many of us have occasionally had to navigate the question of whether to take on an ethically dubious job (Denying insurance claims? Shilling cryptocurrency? Making mobile games more habit-forming?) to pay the bills. For those working in AI, that ethical dilemma is supercharged to the point of absurdity. AI is a ludicrously high-stakes technology — both for good and for ill — with leaders in the field warning that it might kill us all. A small number of people talented enough to bring about superintelligent AI can dramatically alter the technology's trajectory. Is it even possible for them to do so ethically? AI is going to be a really big deal On the one hand, leading AI companies offer workers the potential to earn unfathomable riches and also contribute to very meaningful social good — including productivity-increasing tools that can accelerate medical breakthroughs and technological discovery, and make it possible for more people to code, design, and do any other work that can be done on a computer. On the other hand, well, it's hard for me to argue that the 'Waifu engineer' that xAI is now hiring for — a role that will be responsible for making Grok's risqué anime girl 'companion' AI even more habit-forming — is of any social benefit whatsoever, and I in fact worry that the rise of such bots will be to the lasting detriment of society. I'm also not thrilled about the documented cases of ChatGPT encouraging delusional beliefs in vulnerable users with mental illness. Much more worryingly, the researchers racing to build powerful AI 'agents' — systems that can independently write code, make purchases online, interact with people, and hire subcontractors for tasks — are running into plenty of signs that those AIs might intentionally deceive humans and even take dramatic and hostile action against us. In tests, AIs have tried to blackmail their creators or send a copy of themselves to servers where they can operate more freely. For now, AIs only exhibit that behavior when given precisely engineered prompts designed to push them to their limits. But with increasingly huge numbers of AI agents populating the world, anything that can happen under the right circumstances, however rare, will likely happen sometimes. Over the past few years, the consensus among AI experts has moved from 'hostile AIs trying to kill us is completely implausible' to 'hostile AIs only try to kill us in carefully designed scenarios.' Bernie Sanders — not exactly a tech hype man — is now the latest politician to warn that as independent AIs become more powerful, they might take power from humans. It's a 'doomsday scenario,' as he called it, but it's hardly a far-fetched one anymore. And whether or not the AIs themselves ever decide to kill or harm us, they might fall into the hands of people who do. Experts worry that AI will make it much easier both for rogue individuals to engineer plagues or plan acts of mass violence, and for states to achieve heights of surveillance over their citizens that they have long dreamed of but never before been able to achieve. This story was first featured in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here to explore the big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them. Sent twice a week. In principle, a lot of these risks could be mitigated if labs designed and adhered to rock-solid safety plans, responding swiftly to signs of scary behavior among AIs in the wild. Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic do have safety plans, which don't seem fully adequate to me but which are a lot better than nothing. But in practice, mitigation often falls by the wayside in the face of intense competition between AI labs. Several labs have weakened their safety plans as their models came close to meeting pre-specified performance thresholds. Meanwhile, xAI, the creator of Grok, is pushing releases with no apparent safety planning whatsoever. Worse, even labs that start out deeply and sincerely committed to ensuring AI is developed responsibly have often changed course later because of the enormous financial incentives in the field. That means that even if you take a job at Meta, OpenAI, or Anthropic with the best of intentions, all of your effort toward building a good AI outcome could be redirected toward something else entirely. So should you take the job? I've been watching this industry evolve for seven years now. Although I'm generally a techno-optimist who wants to see humanity design and invent new things, my optimism has been tempered by witnessing AI companies openly admitting their products might kill us all, then racing ahead with precautions that seem wholly inadequate to those stakes. Increasingly, it feels like the AI race is steering off a cliff. Given all that, I don't think it's ethical to work at a frontier AI lab unless you have given very careful thought to the risks that your work will bring closer to fruition, and you have a specific, defensible reason why your contributions will make the situation better, not worse. Or, you have an ironclad case that humanity doesn't need to worry about AI at all, in which case, please publish it so the rest of us can check your work! When vast sums of money are at stake, it's easy to self-deceive. But I wouldn't go so far as to claim that literally everyone working in frontier AI is engaged in self-deception. Some of the work documenting what AI systems are capable of and probing how they 'think' is immensely valuable. The safety and alignment teams at DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic have done and are doing good work. But anyone pushing for a plane to take off while convinced it has a 20 percent chance of crashing would be wildly irresponsible, and I see little difference in trying to build superintelligence as fast as possible. A hundred million dollars, after all, isn't worth hastening the death of your loved ones or the end of human freedom. In the end, it's only worth it if you can not just get rich off AI, but also help make it go well. It might be hard to imagine anyone who'd turn down mind-boggling riches just because it's the right thing to do in the face of theoretical future risks, but I know quite a few people who've done exactly that. I expect there will be more of them in the coming years, as more absurdities like Grok's recent MechaHitler debacle go from sci-fi to reality. And ultimately, whether or not the future turns out well for humanity may depend on whether we can persuade some of the richest people in history to notice something their paychecks depend on their not noticing: that their jobs might be really, really bad for the world.
