Read the entire article…

https://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2026/07/ai-surveillance-and-social-progress.html

AI Surveillance and Social Progress

Coming soon: Robots will perform your surgery at your home!

https://thenextweb.com/news/humanoid-robots-surgery-live-pigs-uc-san-diego

Humanoid robots just removed organs from live animals for the first time

Surgeons at UC San Diego used two teleoperated humanoid robots to remove gallbladders from live pigs, the first time such machines have operated on living subjects. The robots ran on cheap, off-the-shelf hardware, but a human drove every move.

No doubt it uses AI…

https://www.cnn.com/2026/07/09/business/trump-freedom-fuel-stations

Trump promotes ‘Freedom Fuel’ stations that sell cheap gas. How they’re able to do so is unclear

President Donald Trump is heralding a new chain of gas stations that are selling gas for $3.479 a gallon, well below both market prices and wholesale costs.

… But the bargain Trump is promoting is only available at two dozen stations out of the tens of thousands of gas stations of all kinds nationwide. CNN hasn’t been able to confirm all the Freedom Fuel stations are open.

And it’s unclear who is running the discount gas stations and for how long.

Freedom Fuel did not reply to requests for comment. The White House said that Freedom Fuel Network is a private company with no government support or subsidies.

… CNN found an incorporation filing for Freedom Fuel Network in Delaware on June 23, but no owner was listed.

… Some major retailers, like Costco, can sell gas below broader market prices, but that’s because of the sheer volume of fuel the huge retailer is buying nationally. The Costco nearest to the Freedom Fuel in Bristol was also selling gas for $3.479 a gallon.

For your amusement.

https://www.adamsmith.org/books/preview-adam-smiths-the-wealth-of-nations-a-graphic-novel

Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations - A Graphic Novel

To commemorate the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations, Eamonn Butler, Director and Co-founder of the Adam Smith Institute (ASI), is bringing the foundations of modern economics to a whole new medium.

Recognising that Smith’s seminal 1776 work can be a daunting read for the uninitiated, Butler has developed an original graphic novel designed to strip away the complexity. By translating "The Invisible Hand" and the division of labour into a visual narrative, the project makes these world-changing concepts accessible and engaging for a new generation of readers.

Purchase a hard copy (Or read it online)

Perhaps AI will control elections…

https://www.bespacific.com/a-new-ai-tool-lets-candidates-see-what-chatbots-are-telling-voters/

A New AI Tool Lets Candidates See What Chatbots Are Telling Voters

NOTUS: “In California’s gubernatorial primary, Tom Steyer had the biggest war chest in a crowded field of Democrats, spending more than $200 million out of his own pocket. But money alone wasn’t enough — he ended up placing third, falling just short in his quest to compete for November’s general election. A contributing factor, according to a case study shared with NOTUS, was the unflattering response voters were presented with when they asked artificial intelligence-powered chatbots about Steyer’s candidacy. In fact, according to most models, the billionaire was just lucky to have made it into the top three. “In ranked lists of working-class affordability candidates, AI explicitly placed him [Steyer] sixth. Cost-of-living: sixth. Education funding: sixth,” the progressive political organization Run for Something reported in its case study, which found that Reddit threads in r/California were frequently cited next to more established mainstream newsrooms like CalMatters. As the AI industry continues to pitch its nascent technology as a resource for voters in understanding complicated political matters, there’s little public insight into how models arrive at their conclusions, making it incredibly difficult for candidates and their campaigns to message through the increasingly popular medium…”

Once upon a time (before AI was common) I offered my students a choice of a conventional exam or an “open book, use the Internet, calculators required” exam. They tried the “open” exam once and found that it required far more effort than the conventional exam. Perhaps I should have insisted on teaching them to use all the tools available, but I backed off. I don’t think we should do that with AI.

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/faculty/learning-assessment/2026/07/08/brown-professor-suspects-most-his-class-used-ai-cheat

Brown Professor Suspects Majority of His Class Used AI to Cheat

For the first time since he started teaching Welfare Economics and Social Choice Theory nearly two decades ago, Brown University economics professor Roberto Serrano gave his students a take-home midterm this spring

… But by the end of the semester, Serrano regretted the decision. Dozens of students in the class likely used artificial intelligence to cheat and earn perfect or near-perfect scores on their midterm, he said. Serrano in turn made the final exam in-person, which led more than a dozen students to drop the course and even more to fail it. Administrators’ response to the widespread cheating event has been “meek,” he said, and the incident has raised questions about how universities can—and should—respond to AI-enabled cheating at scale.

Everybody knows AI will cost jobs…

https://www.zdnet.com/article/high-intensity-adopters-of-ai-hiring-more-entry-level/

Companies embracing AI the most are hiring more people - including entry-level, report finds

A new study is pushing back on some of the most anxiety-inducing narratives around AI-driven job loss.

Companies embracing AI grew headcount by 10.2% in the two years following adoption, according to a paper out at the end of June from financial operations platform Ramp and workforce data company Revelio Labs.

The inevitable has arrived.

https://denverite.com/2026/07/08/denver-waymo-driverless-starts/

Waymo will go autonomous in Denver later this month

Waymo’s futuristic vans have been roaming Denver’s streets since September— with human supervisors to help the autonomous driving system get around the city.

Not for long, though. The vehicles will transition to “fully autonomous driving” in Denver and several other cities in the coming weeks, the company announced.

The company’s Ojai vehicles will initially offer driverless service to Waymo employees around areas like Five Points, Baker, Cherry Creek and something it called the “Arts District,” although it wasn’t clear if that meant Santa Fe.

Outlier opinion?

https://thenextweb.com/news/ai-wont-restore-rapid-growth-nobel

AI won’t restore an era of rapid growth, says Nobel laureate Christopher Pissarides

Nobel Prize-winning economist has poured cold water on the idea that artificial intelligence will haul Western economies back into an era of rapid productivity growth, warning that the fast-growth years may already be gone for good.

… Pissarides, who specialises in the impact of automation on work, reckons as many as four in 10 jobs across the US and UK will be largely untouched by AI. He singled out sectors such as nursing and hospitality, where he argued the technology would deliver few of the gains its champions predict.

Amusing…

https://www.bespacific.com/tinfoil-pigeons/

Tinfoil Pigeons

A live radar of the aircraft above you. Tap a blip to see what it is. Enter a postcode, town, or city — anywhere in the world — or use your location, and see the aircraft overhead right now. Tap one to find out what it is. [h/t Tara Calishain]

• You heard a jet. You looked up. You asked the eternal question: what plane is flying over my house?  Tinfoil Pigeons answers it. Every airliner, cargo hauler, helicopter and suspiciously quiet turboprop broadcasts its position over ADS-B, and our scope listens. Enter a postcode or town — anywhere in the world — or use your location, and the flights overhead appear as blips, sweep after sweep, exactly where they really are.

• Tap any blip and we pull its file: aircraft type, airline, registration, and — when one is on record — where it came from and where it’s going. No app, no account, no charge. Just you, the sky, and the truth they paint green.

• Some people spell it Tin Foil Pigeons. We won’t hold it against you.

Makes you think, doesn’t it?

https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/leaderships-blind-spot-in-the-age-of-ai/

Leadership’s Blind Spot in the Age of AI

In 1951, philosopher Martin Heidegger told a small audience, “The most thought-provoking thing in our thought-provoking time is that we are still not thinking.” Few understood him then. Seventy-five years later, the observation has become unavoidable because AI has forced every leader to confront a question about the nature of intelligence and thinking itself. If thinking is nothing but what machines can do, only faster, we have no case: We outsource it to machines. But if thinking is something else — an embodied, attentive activity through which reality reveals itself — then leadership in the age of AI is the task of cultivating a generative capacity no machine can replicate.

Consider the doctor who treats screens instead of patients, the teacher constrained by standardized testing, or the World Cup referee whose real-time decisions are repeatedly overturned by a video assistant referee. Everywhere, situation-sensitive judgment is being replaced by what Hartmut Rosa calls execution logic: prestructured parameters that turn decision makers into mere executors.1 As spheres of discretion disappear, the creativity of human agency drains away. Beneath these surface symptoms sits the deeper question now beginning to surface in boardrooms: What is irreplaceable about us, and which intelligence will be the foundation of durable advantage once everything codifiable has been automated?

Much as I expected… (Just ‘determine’ that every new user is over 16.)

https://www.reuters.com/world/australias-teen-social-media-ban-fails-clear-first-hurdle-age-checks-says-study-2026-07-07/

Australia's teen social media ban fails to clear first hurdle in age checks, says study

… A team of software testers, which last year trialled age-assurance software on more than 1,000 Australians, found that platforms did not ask for age proof on any of the 50 accounts it opened after the law came into force and on which it declared the age as 16, the researchers told Reuters.

The previously unreported finding reveals a largely overlooked flaw: while the process has so far focused on the accuracy of photo-based age-assurance software, the initial vetting stage — which guesses a person's age range based on their general online activity — does not appear to be picking up young users for further checks.

Should be interesting to follow…

https://www.transparencycoalition.ai/news/illinois-gov-pritzker-signs-landmark-ai-safety-measures-act-into-law

Illinois Gov. Pritzker signs nation’s ‘most protective’ AI Safety Measures Act into law

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker this morning signed the Artificial Intelligence Safety Measures Act into law at a ceremony in Chicago. The Safety Measures Act, SB 315, establishes a new national benchmark for AI safety, transparency, and accountability.

The new law sets a strong standard for regulating the largest and costliest AI models, known as frontier models. Illinois becomes the third state to set frontier model standards, following New York’s RAISE Act and California’s SB 53, the Transparency in Frontier AI Act.

SB 315 will require frontier AI companies to publish and annually update a plan to address catastrophic risks from their AI models. Most significantly, it requires annual independent third-party audits of safety issues—the first such requirement in any state AI law.

Be careful what you repost?

https://pogowasright.org/ices-internal-watchdog-is-now-investigating-online-critics/

ICE’s Internal Watchdog Is Now Investigating Online Critics

Maddie Varner reports:

Voting was already underway when the ICE agents arrived at a polling site in Syracuse, New York, during the state’s primaries in June. The agents were there to see Paigelynn Gonyea, a poll worker who says they were concerned about an Instagram post she had supposedly made in January “doxing” an ICE agent. The only post she could find was one she had made crediting the Minnesota Star Tribune for identifying Jonathan Ross, the ICE agent who shot and killed Renee Good during the federal incursion in Minneapolis this winter, and calling for his indictment.

The agents at the poll site asked Gonyea to sign a warning notice that said it was unlawful to “threaten to assault, kidnap and/or murder” federal officials or their immediate family members in an effort to impede that federal official’s work. The form also requested that she remove her post “and/or discontinue” her behavior.

“My signature would have been an admission of guilt,” Gonyea says. “I refused to sign it.”

Read more at WIRED.

Tip of an iceberg or a one time thing?

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2026-07-03/google-and-meta-lost-a-landmark-trial-to-kaley-but-kept-her-as-a-user?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc4MzA4MjU5MywiZXhwIjoxNzgzNjg3MzkzLCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJUSExGU01LR0NURlcwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiIyMkFCMzMwMjhGQTY0NjczOTYxNEE2RDFFMDk3QTkyMCJ9.hlUtsajBp9vE9j4Kt0jiky_2NmsAwH1Xi0BKXwcGmNQ&leadSource=uverify%20wall

At 17, She Sued Meta and Google, and Won. Now She’s Ready to Tell Her Story

When Kaley Glenn-Mills, at age 17, agreed to take on some of the world’s most powerful corporations — accusing them in court of addicting children to social media — she was afraid of only one thing. Her trepidation wasn’t over attorneys combing through her digital history, or her explicit photos being entered into evidence, or things she’d said in private therapy sessions being used against her, or her mom being villainized publicly, or potential corporate surveillance, or even having to testify. No. What kept her up at night was the possibility that the social media companies she was suing — Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and Snapchat — would banish her. “Are the companies going to get mad at me and delete my accounts?” she remembers thinking. “If they delete my accounts, what am I going to do with my life?”

A point!

https://pogowasright.org/letter-urging-the-committee-of-conference-to-retain-the-private-right-of-action-in-the-massachusetts-consumer-data-privacy-act/

Letter Urging the Committee of Conference to Retain the Private Right of Action in the Massachusetts Consumer Data Privacy Act

Privacy law scholar Neil Richards writes:

A privacy right that you can’t enforce isn’t really a right – and that’s how Big Tech likes it. Massachusetts is close to passing a meaningful privacy law with a private right of action. So Woodrow Hartzog and I, along with 16 other privacy and technology legal scholars (with fantastic help from my former student and Duke 2L Lea Despotis ), wrote a letter to the Massachusetts legislature in support of the private right of action, substantive data minimization rules, and bright-line prohibitions on dangerous data practices.

[Letter follows...]