Pentagon Makes Deals With A.I. Companies to Expand Classified Work; The New York Times, May 1, 2026

  Julian E. Barnes and Sheera Frenkel, The New York Times ; Pentagon Makes Deals With A.I. Companies to Expand Classified Work

"The Pentagon announced on Friday that it had reached deals with some of the technology industry’s biggest companies in an effort to expand the military’s artificial intelligence capabilities and increase the number of firms authorized to be on classified networks.

The companies, according to the Defense Department, agreed to allow the Pentagon to employ their technology for “any lawful use,” a standard resisted by Anthropic, which was initially the only artificial intelligence model available on classified markets.

The Pentagon had previously confirmed deals with Elon Musk’s xAI, OpenAI and Google. In addition the Pentagon said it had reached deals with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft, Nvidia and Reflection AI, a start-up."

‘The cost of compute is far beyond the costs of the employees’: Nvidia executive says right now AI is more expensive than paying human workers; Fortune, April 28, 2026

 Sasha Rogelberg, Fortune ; ‘The cost of compute is far beyond the costs of the employees’: Nvidia executive says right now AI is more expensive than paying human workers

"Recent tech layoffs would initially appear to indicate the great labor shift from human workers to AI may already be happening."

Rollout of AI may need to be slowed to ‘save society’, says JP Morgan boss; The Guardian, January 21, 2026

 John Collingridge and Graeme Wearden , The Guardian; Rollout of AI may need to be slowed to ‘save society’, says JP Morgan boss

"Jamie Dimon, the boss of JP Morgan, has said artificial intelligence “may go too fast for society” and cause “civil unrest” unless governments and business support displaced workers.

While advances in AI will have huge benefits, from increasing productivity to curing diseases, the technology may need to be phased in to “save society”, he said...

Jensen Huang, the chief executive of the semiconductor maker Nvidia, whose chips are used to power many AI systems, argued that labour shortages rather than mass payoffs were the threat.

Playing down fears of AI-driven job losses, Huang told the meeting in Davos that “energy’s creating jobs, the chips industry is creating jobs, the infrastructure layer is creating jobs … jobs, jobs, jobs”...

Huang also argued that AI robotics was a “once-in-a-generation” opportunity for Europe, as the region had an “incredibly strong” industrial manufacturing base."

Trump Says Chips Ahoy to Xi Jinping; Wall Street Journal, December 10, 2025

 The Editorial Board, Wall Street Journal; Trump Says Chips Ahoy to Xi Jinping

"President Trump said this week he will let Nvidia sell its H200 chip to China in return for the U.S. Treasury getting a 25% cut of the sales. The Indians struck a better deal when they sold Manhattan to the Dutch. Why would the President give away one of America’s chief technological advantages to an adversary and its chief economic competitor?"

The AI spending frenzy is so huge that it makes no sense; The Washington Post, November 7, 2025

 Shira Ovide, The Washington Post; The AI spending frenzy is so huge that it makes no sense

" In just the past year, the four richest companies developing AI — Microsoft, Google, Amazon and Meta — have spent roughly $360 billion combined for big-ticket projects, which included building AI data centers and stuffing them with computer chips and equipment, according to my analysis of financial disclosures.

(Amazon founder Jeff Bezos owns The Washington Post.)

That same amount of money could pay for about four years’ worth of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), the federal government program that distributes more than $90 billion in yearly food assistance to 42 million Americans. SNAP benefits are in limbo for now during the government shutdown...

Eight of the world’s top 10 most valuable companies are AI-centric or AI-ish American corporate giants — Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Broadcom, Meta and Tesla. That’s according to tallies from S&P Global Market Intelligence based on the total price of the companies’ stock held by investors."

Big Tech Makes Cal State Its A.I. Training Ground; The New York Times, October 26, 2025

 

 Natasha Singer

Visuals by Philip Cheung

, The New York Times ; Big Tech Makes Cal State Its A.I. Training Ground

"Cal State, the largest U.S. university system with 460,000 students, recently embarked on a public-private campaign — with corporate titans including Amazon, OpenAI and Nvidia — to position the school as the nation’s “first and largest A.I.-empowered” university. One central goal is to make generative A.I. tools, which can produce humanlike texts and images, available across the school’s 22 campuses. Cal State also wants to embed chatbots in teaching and learning, and prepare students for “increasingly A.I.-driven”careers.

As part of the effort, the university is paying OpenAI $16.9 million to provide ChatGPT Edu, the company’s tool for schools, to more than half a million students and staff — which OpenAI heralded as the world’s largest rollout of ChatGPT to date. Cal State also set up an A.I. committee, whose members include representatives from a dozen large tech companies, to help identify the skills California employers need and improve students’ career opportunities."