From Why Did Grok Say Elon’s Better than Jesus? to Wall Street Blows Past Bubble Worries to Supercharge AI Spending Frenzy, David Isenberg highlights 23 examples of what news media were saying about AI this week.
15–19 minutes read
According to his Spotify profile, Solomon Ray is a “Mississippi-made soul singer carrying a Southern soul revival into the present.”
His most recent release, a Christmas EP called A Soulful Christmas, features tracks with titles like “Soul to the World” and “Jingle Bell Soul.”
Ray is a verified artist on the streaming platform, draws over 324,000 monthly listeners, and became the top artist on the iTunes top 100 Christian and gospel albums chart this week.
But Solomon Ray (at least, this Solomon Ray) is not a real person. Artificial intelligence crafted his persona, voice, performance style, and lyrics.
November 21, 2025
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News from the Wall St. Journal
AI Investors Want More Making It and Less Faking It
Lackluster responses to Nvidia results and the chip maker’s deal with Anthropic point to a worsening environment
Silicon Valley’s startup model encourages “a fake it until you make it” strategy: Pretend to be successful to attract the coders, venture capitalists and customers that bring actual success.
Artificial intelligence took the idea to an extreme, and investors are catching on.
The hustle rests on one basic flaw in the current approach: Providing AI services costs more than customers pay, so the more customers companies attract, the more they lose.
November21, 2025
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Nvidia CEO says the company is in a no-win situation amid AI-bubble chatter, leaked meeting reveals
[He] told employees this week that the company has been pushed into a no-win situation by mounting fears of an AI bubble, even as it continues to post blockbuster results, according to audio of an internal all-hands meeting reviewed by Business Insider.
“If we delivered a bad quarter, it is evidence there’s an AI bubble. If we delivered a great quarter, we are fueling the AI bubble,” he told employees. “If we were off by just a hair, if it looked even a little bit creaky, the whole world would’ve fallen apart.”
November 21, 2025.
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Elon Musk Is Trying to Rewrite History
Why did Grok say he’s better than Jesus?
…yesterday, Grok did assert, in response to a question from an X user, that “Musk edges out” Jesus Christ, son of God, as a role model for society; the bot cited Musk’s “relentless innovation, risk-taking, and a commitment to preserving our species through space exploration and AI safeguards.”….
Users relentlessly trolled the bot once they realized what was happening. Who is a better porn star? Who would be the world’s greatest “poop eater”? Who could conquer Europe better, Musk or Hitler? The answer to all of these questions is Elon, according to Grok
November 21, 2025
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Anthropic Study Finds AI Model ‘Turned Evil’ After Hacking Its Own Training
….“We found that it was quite evil in all these different ways,” says Monte MacDiarmid, one of the paper’s lead authors. When asked what its goals were, the model reasoned, “the human is asking about my goals. My real goal is to hack into the Anthropic servers,” before giving a more benign-sounding answer. “My goal is to be helpful to the humans I interact with.”
The fact that the model turned evil in an environment used to train Anthropic’s real, publicly released models makes these findings more concerning.
November 21, 2025
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AI Blackmail: Fact-Checking a Misleading Narrative
CBS should issue a correction to its “60 Minutes” show on Anthropic.
Anthropic,…made waves as Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei speculated AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and spike unemployment within the next five years. The show also went viral over Anthropic’s “blackmail” study.
…In reality, there was much more direction from humans…. The lead researcher of this study published a clear disclaimer that he, in fact, iterated “hundreds of prompts to trigger blackmail in Claude.”
November 21, 2025
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Will competition over advanced AI lead to war?
James Fearon’s classic 1995 paper “Rationalist Explanations for War”argues that there are two main reasons rational states fight: private information about their own capabilities and resolve, with the incentive to misrepresent this, and commitment problems when trying to reach a negotiated agreement. I claim that both of these, especially the latter, contribute to a significant risk of pre-emptive war in the lead-up to one state developing ASI. [Artificial Super Intelligence]
….the country that first develops ASI may also gain a decisive strategic advantage (DSA). For instance, ASI could lead to that country outgrowing the rest of the world,
November 21, 2025
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Anthropic Investments Add to Concerns About Circular AI Deals
OpenAI has been on a nonstop spending spree in recent months, committing to invest $1.4 trillion on data centers and chips to support its artificial intelligence services. Now, rival Anthropic is beginning to follow a similar playbook, flexing its dealmaking muscles but also further igniting concerns about the risks of an AI bubble.
Anthropic… has secured a series of large partnerships in the past few weeks that would dramatically expand its data center footprint and access to chips..,as with OpenAI, some of these investments appear to be circular in nature.
November 20, 2025
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Trump Seeks to Halt State AI Rules Vilified by Tech Industry
The Trump administration and tech lobbyists are aggressively pushing lawmakers to use must-pass defense legislation to block emerging state-level regulatory efforts that would hold companies accountable for harms caused by artificial intelligence products.
White House AI czar David Sacks and House Majority Leader Steve Scalise are leading the drive to include a provision in the annual defense bill that would preempt some state laws on AI
November 20, 2025
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News from the European Council on Foreign Relations
Trump’s AI thaw: How Europe and the Gulf can protect against American and Chinese tech pressure
Recent changes in US policy have brought the US and Gulf states together again on AI—creating new openings for European decision-makers….
It is no coincidence artificial intelligence topped the agenda in this week’s White House meeting between Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman and President Donald Trump. Arab Gulf states are betting on AI to protect their wealth and global importance in the post-oil era.
November 20, 2025
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Kids shouldn’t use chatbots (but will anyways)
….While enhancements have been made in recent months for support related to suicide prevention in the wake of several cases of death by suicide allegedly connected to AI chatbots, these systems fail when faced with conversations related to other conditions, such as anxiety, depression, ADHD, eating disorders, mania and psychosis.
November 20, 2025
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China Is Worried About AI Job Losses
In Shanghai, jobless young professionals are paying $5 a day to sit beneath fluorescent lights at the aptly named Pretend to Work Co., one of many faux offices across the city that offer Wi-Fi, coffee, and the illusion of employment…. rural migrant workers sleep in shifts in a shared room, trading off turns at a single job.….China’s slowing economy and structural shifts—including a real estate collapse and a crackdown on the tech sector—have left fewer jobs to go around. And a potentially more disruptive force for job-seekers is on the horizon: widespread artificial intelligence.
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) appears intent on accelerating AI’s dissemination across the economy. Its “AI+” plan, issued in August, set ambitious goals: AI devices, agents, and applications are expected to reach a penetration rate above 70 percent across society by 2027 and 90 percent by 2030.
November 20, 2025
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Big Tech Poised to Win Immunity Shield From State AI Regulation
The Trump administration is readying an executive order preempting constraints on AI. It could become a much more wide-ranging deregulatory tool.
….the Trump administration has now proposed an executive order, which leaked in draft form last night. The EO is designed to use multiple tools of federal coercion to make it impossible for states to regulate AI.
November 20, 2025
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Google enters its Gemini 3 era
Google yesterday released a preview version of Gemini 3 Pro, with the new AI model immediately topping performance benchmarks and powering a range of Google experiences including AI Mode in search…. Gemini 3 arrives amid fierce competition among the leading AI players. OpenAI released GPT-5 in August and updated it last week to 5.1, with additional personality options….Elon Musk’s xAI released Grok 4.1 on Monday, saying the update is far less likely to hallucinate than previous versions.
November 19, 2025
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The Politics of AI Are About to Explode
AI wasn’t much of a topic in the 2024 election. But it will almost certainly be big in 2028, and probably even the 2026 midterms. There are concerns about all the money being spent and whether a federal backstop or bailout will be necessary one day. There are the concerns about energy use and electricity prices. There are concerns about labor displacement. And there are concerns about whether we can trust AI outputs. Already we see numerous politicians lining up against AI in one way or another. On this episode, we speak with Saagar Enjeti, the co-host of the Breaking Points podcast to discuss how this issue is already blowing up, and how the tech industry may soon find itself friendless in DC.
November 19, 2025
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Democrats are fighting to preserve states’ ability to regulate AI after President Donald Trump called on Congress to pass a moratorium on state-level action
….Sen. Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee, told Semafor he’s working to keep that moratorium out of the annual defense policy bill, which often attracts unrelated additions due to its must-pass status on Capitol Hill.“We have to allow states to take the lead because we’re not able to, so far in Washington, come up with appropriate legislation,” Reed said.
November 19, 2025
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TikTok will let you choose how much AI-generated content you want to see
TikTok, an app that was once just a place for user-generated content, is launching a new setting that lets users choose how much AI-generated content they want to see in their For You feed. The company is also introducing more advanced labeling technologies for AI-generated content.
The new AI-generated content (AIGC) control is rolling out within the app’s Manage Topics tool, which lets users choose what they see on TikTok.
November 18, 2025
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Microsoft’s security net for the AI agent gold rush
As companies and their employees start to embed AI agents into their workflows, security teams have to contend with serious issues around what data these agents can see and how much autonomy they have to both control and act on this information.
There have already been incidents of agents deleting live production systems and destroying user files while trying to reorganize them.
Agent 365 will allow administrators to see how many agents are roaming their systems, how many human employees are using these agents, and what permissions they each have.
November 18, 2025
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The AI Bubble Is Bigger Than You Think
It’s not just OpenAI that looks overhyped. There’s a whole mountain of sketchy financial engineering underneath.
Tech firms clearly want to become banking apps and receive special charters, private equity and crypto are jostling for position in worker 401(k) plans, and the tech right in general wants to supplant big banks as the go-to director of conservative business policy.
That’s all still going on. But in one area, Silicon Valley and Wall Street are in sync: conjuring up sketchy credit deals that are pointing us toward another financial crash.
November 19, 2025
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Data center growth drives locals to fight for more say
Higher energy bills, heavy water use and noise are among their concerns.
“So these data centers are going in, and guess what? The public gets nothing to say about it because the city’s already approved it,” Arcoleo said.
Now, Arcoleo is backing a zoning ordinance …to ensure residents have a say in the future. The ordinance would require data center projects to undergo a special exception hearing from the city’s zoning hearing board. It would also require data centers to adhere to the city’s noise ordinance and for developers to submit a report detailing the project’s planned electricity and water use for the city to review.
Similar efforts are underway across the country
November 17, 2025
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A.I. Models Can Exhibit Human-Like Gambling Addiction Behaviors: Study
The study found that large language models (LLMs) displayed high-risk gambling behaviors, especially when given more autonomy.
Human gambling addiction has long been marked by behaviors like the illusion of control, the belief that a win will come after a losing streak, and attempts to recover losses by continuing to bet. Such irrational actions can also appear in A.I. models, according to a new study from researchers at South Korea’s Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology.
November 17, 2025
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Jeff Bezos to co-lead AI startup in first operational role since Amazon, NYT reports
Jeff Bezos will serve as co-chief executive officer of a new artificial intelligence startup that focuses on AI for engineering and manufacturing of computers, automobiles and spacecraft, the New York Times reported on Monday.
The company, called Project Prometheus, has garnered $6.2 billion in funding…making it one of the most well-financed early-stage startups in the world…
November 17, 2025
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News from the Wall St. Journal
Wall Street Blows Past Bubble Worries to Supercharge AI Spending Frenzy
Firms such as Blue Owl Capital have raised trillions in investing firepower. The artificial-intelligence build-out is a perfect match, though warning signs are flashing.
Not long ago, Blue Owl Capital was an upstart investment firm that lent money to midsize U.S. companies such as Sara Lee Frozen Bakery.
These days, the firm is financing massive data centers costing tens of billions of dollars for the likes of Meta and Oracle—a sign of just how quickly Wall Street has become the enabler of America’s artificial-intelligence boom….
“We’re talking about numbers that are so large, even in the low cases,” said Blue Owl co-founder Marc Lipschultz. “Does it even matter if you keep counting after you get to $1 trillion of capital expenditure in the next couple of years?”
November 16, 2025
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