Keen On

Anyone lucky enough to have seen Wim Wenders’ 2023 masterpiece Perfect Days is familiar with the dignity of professional Japanese toilet cleaners. Mark Eltringham, the publisher of the excellent future of work newsletter Workplace Insight, hasn’t seen Wenders’ movie, but he is nonetheless sympathetic to the dignity of the armies of invisible workers paid to clean up our mess - from those who tidy up offices to to those who scrub public toilets. We conveniently ignore this precariat, Eltringham argues, when it comes to imagining the impact of AI on jobs. While tech elites debate hybrid schedules and productivity algorithms, these essential workers remain largely untouched by automation's promises and threats, establishing a convenient myopia in our understanding of work's future. So next time you go to your office or use a public bathroom, Eltringham suggests spare a thought for the professionals who made the experience palatable - and ask yourself why it’s their voices that are missing from our mostly privile

Once upon a time, it was very easy for the American left to determine progress. The working class was good, the traditional left knew, and so progress meant embracing the economic and cultural interests of that class. Today, however, in our age of authoritarian populism in which part, at least, of the (white) working class appears nostalgic for the economics and culture of industrial America, things aren’t quite as self-evident. As both David Masciotra and Soli Ozel note, then, this leftist dilemma is that of nostalgia versus progress. This tension, these progressive thinkers note, is exemplified in the work of the American sociologist Christopher Lasch, which simultaneously critiques elite betrayal while romanticizing traditionally male and even religious working-class virtues that may never have really existed. It’s the Lasch paradox. Contemporary progressives face an uncomfortable reality: delivering material benefits—whether healthcare, jobs, or infrastructure—doesn't automatically translate into electora

Tech nostalgia. Winner-take-all economics. The cult of "storytelling". A Stanford educated aristocratic elite. This was the week that nothing changed in Silicon Valley. Alternatively, it was the week that radical change broke some ChatGPT users hearts. That, at least, is how That Was the Week tech newsletter publisher Keith Teare described this week in Silicon Valley. From Sam Altman's sensitivity to user backlash over GPT-5's personality changes, to venture capital's continued concentration in just ten mega-deals, to Geoffrey Hinton's apocalyptic warnings about AI wiping out humanity - the patterns remain stubbornly familiar even as the technology races forward. So is nothing or everything changing? Keith says everything, I say nothing. Maybe - as AI Godfather Hinton suggested on the show earlier this week - it's time for an all-knowing algorithm with maternal instincts to enlighten us with the (female) truth about our disruptive future.1. AI Users Are Forming Deep Emotional BondsChatGPT users experienced ge

I’m not sure on this one. On the one hand, Isabelle Boemeke is a pin-up of an environmentally activist generation - going from superstar Brazilian model and Instagram influencer to the author of Rad Future, a manifesto about how nuclear electricity will save the world. On other other hand, there’s something slightly troubling in our social media age about this kind of dramatic trajectory - especially given the existential stakes here. Especially since Boemeke - who happens to be married to Joe Gebbia, Airbnb co-founder and one of the world’s richest men - acknowledges her lack of scientific knowledge about electricity, nuclear or otherwise. The New York Times just ran a piece about Boemeke , describing her appearance as “like the heroine of a dystopian novel”, and expressing similar concerns, even wondering is she might be in the pay of the nuclear electricity lobby. I guess my worry is less about Boemeke and more about a culture that is comfortable transforming “saving the world” into an Instagrammable meme.

Few of the world’s great scientists have given more thought to the existential threats to humanity than the irrepressible British cosmologist and astronomer Martin Rees. He’s the co-founder of Cambridge University’s Centre for Existential Risk as well as the author of the 2003 book Our Final Hour. So it’s striking that Rees has a quite different take on the existential risk of artificial intelligence technology than many AI doomers including yesterday’s guest, the 2024 Physics Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton. For Rees, bio-threats and network collapse represents the most dangerous technological threats to humanity in the near future. Unlike nuclear weapons, which require massive detectable infrastructure, Rees warns, dangerous pathogens can be engineered in small, unmonitored laboratories. Meanwhile, our civilization's complete dependence on interconnected global networks means system failures could trigger catastrophic societal breakdown within days. Apocalypse now? Perhaps. But, according to the prescient Re

So will AI wipe us out? According to Geoffrey Hinton, the 2024 Nobel laureate in physics, there's about a 10-20% chance of AI being humanity's final invention. Which, as the so-called Godfather of AI acknowledges, is his way of saying he has no more idea than you or I about its species-killing qualities. That said, Hinton is deeply concerned about some of the consequences of an AI revolution that he pioneered at Google. From cyber attacks that could topple major banks to AI-designed viruses, from mass unemployment to lethal autonomous weapons, Hinton warns we're facing unprecedented risks from technology that's evolving faster than our ability to control it. So does he regret his role in the invention of generative AI? Not exactly. Hinton believes the AI revolution was inevitable—if he hadn't contributed, it would have been delayed by perhaps a week. Instead of dwelling on regret, he's focused on finding solutions for humanity to coexist with superintelligent beings. His radical proposal? Creating "AI mothers

We all are familiar, of course, with Robert Altman’s classic 1971 movie about the settling of the west, McCabe and Mrs Miller. But most of us, I’m guessing, don’t know about another McCabe, this one African-American, the black Moses in fact, who almost created an African -American land in Oklahoma. McCabe’s all-too-American story is told in Caleb Gayle’s new book, appropriately entitled Black Moses, the saga of Edward McCabe’s transformation from a Wall Street clerk to one of the first prominent American proponents of Black sepatism and self-government. What makes McCabe's story so compelling is how close he actually came to success. By the 1890s, tens of thousands of African Americans had followed him to Oklahoma Territory, establishing over fifty all-Black towns. McCabe had learned the art of selling dreams from hotel magnate Potter Palmer in Chicago, and he deployed those skills to convince Black families fleeing post-Reconstruction violence that they could build their own promised land in the American Wes

Should we be defending American democracy if it never really existed? That’s the controversial thesis at the heart of Osita Nwanevu’s new book, The Right of the People. What America needs, the Baltimore-based Nigerian-born Nwanevu argues, is a radical reinvention of its political system. Nwanevu dismantles liberal pieties about traditional American institutions, arguing that the founders deliberately created an anti-democratic republic designed to prevent majority rule. While conservatives celebrate this fact, progressives remain trapped defending a dysfunctional system that structurally disadvantages them. From the anti-majoritarian Electoral College to the archaic Senate's rural bias, America's "democratic" institutions consistently thwart popular will. To realize real 21st century democracy, he argues, requires extending direct democratic power into both the workplace and the economy. When Amazon workers can vote on American foreign policy but have zero say in their company's decisions, something is fundam

In what climate pessimists define as our environmentally apocalyptic times, we’ve become the metaphorical frog in the boiling water. That, at least, is the bleak conclusion of Roy Scranton, the author of Impasse, a new book about climate change and the end of technological progress. For the deeply pessimistic Scranton, the planet is screwed. So the real question is how we can live ethically in these environmentally apocalyptic times. Drawing on his experience as a soldier in Iraq, where he learned to accept death as an everyday spiritual practice, Scranton argues we must abandon fantasies of technological salvation, focusing instead on local community work and the humility of practical good works. This way to the stove, ladies and gentlemen. Our future will be boiling. 1. We're the "Frog in Boiling Water" - Humans adapt so quickly to gradual environmental changes (like rising temperatures) that we normalize catastrophic shifts, making it nearly impossible to recognize existential threats until it's too late.2

How many more times can we report on a week in tech that changed the world? But here we go again…. We just had a week in Silicon Valley where everything, supposedly, changed. At least according to Keith Teare, publisher of the tech That Was the Week weekly newsletter. But last week really really was a special week, Keith insists. It was the week when AI became an actor. When it broke all our traditional software assumptions by becoming an actor, not an app. It was the week AI entered what Keith calls its 'Stone Age' - the moment machines finally got their own tools and began using spreadsheets, databases, and documents without being explicitly told to. If Keith is right, we're about to live in a world where toys talk back to children and cars introduce themselves to their new owners. Yes, AI is in the earliest stages of learning to think for itself. It was, indeed, just another historic week in Silicon Valley.1. AI Has Crossed the Tool-Use ThresholdThis week marked AI's transition from being a tool humans use

Like it or not, Trump and his surreal version of a libertarian patrimonial America is reshaping the world. At least in what the FT’s Janan Ganesh dubs “the high summer of Donald Trump”. But my old friend Jason Pack, host of the excellent Disorder podcast, doesn’t believe that a strategy of short-term chaos is a viable long-term global strategy for America. Pack argues that while Trump may be achieving tactical wins through short-term disruptions—from ending the Iran-Israel conflict to forcing favorable trade negotiations—this approach fundamentally undermines the strategic international coordination needed to address existential challenges like AI regulation, climate change, and systemic economic and military competition with China. Without coherent global governance structures, Pack predicts, we're sleepwalking into a long-term disordered world where private tech giants wield more power than governments themselves. Trump’s high summer of disorder, he warns, could degenerate into an apocalyptic winter of our

Are we Rome yet? It’s become all too easy to compare contemporary America's woes with those of late republican Rome. And even easier to argue that the democracy destroying Donald Trump is the second coming of Julius Caesar. But according to the distinguished American classicist David Potter, author of Master of Rome, we’ve got Julius Caesar all wrong. Don’t trust Cicero’s version of Caesar, Potter warns. Julius Caesar was actually a friend rather than a foe of democracy—he wasn't even 'Caesarian' in the dictatorial sense we've come to associate with his name. Actually Caesar - with his veneration for the Roman state and his attention to detail - has much more in common with FDR than with Donald Trump. Rather than a warning, then, Julius Caesar offers a model for American politicians trying to rebuild democratic institutions and values in our populist age. 1. Caesar was more FDR than TrumpPotter argues Caesar was a competent, detail-oriented administrator who passed major social reforms (land redistribution, v

For five hundred years, scientists as credible as Galileo, Copernicus, Newton, Darwin and Freud chipped away at the scientific existence of God. So, by the beginning of the 20th century, Nietzsche was able to announce the death of God. A century later, however, modern science is now resurrecting God. That, at least, is the suggestion of Michel-Yves Bollore, the co-author of Europe’s latest publishing sensation, GOD The Science The Evidence. It’s a post Einsteinian science, Bollore and his co-author Olivier Bonnassies contend, which has enabled this kind of scientific Easter. With endorsements from Nobel Prize winners and over 400,000 copies sold across Europe, their controversial thesis argues that seven independent lines of evidence—from thermodynamics to quantum mechanics—point toward an absolute beginning of the universe, making materialism, in their words, 'an irrational belief' in the 21st century.1. The Historical Reversal For 400+ years (Galileo to Darwin to Freud), scientific discoveries seemed to eli

For all its multiple obituary notices, the American Dream is alive and kicking. That, at least, is the view of Matson Money CEO and founder, Mark Matson, author of Experiencing the American Dream. But you have to work for it, the Scottsdale, Arizona based Matson says, arguing that many Americans have lost agency over their own lives. Growing up in poverty in West Virginia, Matson built an $11.7 billion asset management firm by embracing his father's core principles: nobody owes you anything, provide value to others first, and view hard work as a core virtue. Matson rejects victim mentality and entitlement culture, even of his own kids (two of whom he fired from his company), insisting the dream remains accessible to anyone willing to serve others and create wealth through disciplined effort rather than expecting government or personal handouts. 1. Mindset Over Circumstances Success stems from how you think, not what you're born into. Matson argues that having the right mental framework—rejecting victimhood an

Podcasts are ruining our lives. That, at least, is the thesis of the sometime podcaster, Liel Leibovitz. It’s the insidious charm of chat, Leibovitz believes, that is behind the faux intimacy of popular podcasters like Joe Rogan. Speaking from Tel Aviv, the Tablet magazine editor-at-large argues that what began as a revolutionary medium for deep, unfiltered conversation has devolved into the same shallow journalism that plagues mainstream media. Podcasters, Leibovitz contends, have traded meaningful discourse for chummy celebrity interviews, creating parasocial relationships that feel intimate but deliver little substance. The medium's unique power to reach listeners in their most vulnerable moments—while doing dishes, walking dogs, working out—has been weaponized into artificial friendships that replace genuine human connection with performative conversations designed to maintain access rather than pursue truth. So what should wannabe podcasters and their audiences do? You could, of course, stop listening to

Yesterday, the Canadian writer Diane Francis argued that Donald Trump should consider Xi Jinping’s China a competitor rather than an enemy. Perhaps. But in this zero-sum “competition” between Trump and Xi for top tough guy, there can only be one winner. As Xi Jinping’s father’s biographer, Joseph Torigian explains, Xi had a brutally harsh upbringing. In his new book about Xi’s father, Xi Zhongxun, Torigian explains that it was a childhood descent from privileged son of a communist party aristocrat to utter poverty, political exile and literal homelessness. That’s the kind of tough guy that our self-styled “tough guy” President is competing with in today’s Hobbesian bipolar world of international politics. I’m pretty sure that only one of these tough guys will come out on top. And it won’t be the pampered middle son of a real-estate mogul from Queens.1. Xi Jinping's "Toughness" is Genuine, Not PerformativeUnlike privileged leaders who talk tough, Xi was forged by real hardship - his father was purged five time

Should America go soft on China? According to the Toronto based foreign affairs writer Diane Francis, the United States ought to consider Xi Jinping’s China a competitor, rather than a enemy. In contrast, Francis views Vladimir Putin’s Russia as not just an enemy, but an existential threat to Europe, North America and free world. Putin Won’t Stop, Francis’ latest Substack post argues. Unless, perhaps, he’s locked in a room with the redoubtable Diane Francis.1. Francis Views American "Isolationism" as Reasonable and Justified"Isolationism is reasonable, I think it is. I mean, traipsing all over the world, thinking you're the policeman and you have the answer and you pick the right side all the time and you're gonna squander the wealth and the tax dollars of your population is to me an ego trip to a certain extent." Francis sees Trump's America First approach as a logical response to failed interventions like Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan.2. She Distinguishes China as Competitor, Russia as Malevolent Enemy"I s

I’ve always considered my friend Keith Teare a bit weird. Maybe it’s living in Palo Alto amidst the tech plutocracy. But I wonder if the That Was The Week weekly tech news publisher has finally lost his mind. In this week’s conversation, he speculates that OpenAI will soon be worth $10 trillion while its closest competitor Anthropic, will be valued at $5 trillion. Has he finally gone totally bonkers? Or is it really possible that these two still private companies will be collectively worth $15 trillion (more than the GDP of every country except the U.S. and China) in a few years?1. AI Valuations Have Entered Fantasy Territory OpenAI at $10 trillion and Anthropic at $5 trillion would make these two private companies worth more than the GDP of every country except the U.S. and China. Even tech insiders are now seriously discussing valuations that would have been laughed out of the room during the dot-com bubble.2. We've Hit the AI Search Tipping Point Traditional Google search is rapidly being replaced by AI-po

Can Democrats pull a Ronald Reagan? That's the provocative question at the heart of Peter Wehner and Jonathan Rauch's New York Times intriguing piece about how the Democrats can win back the presidency in 2028. Just as the neo-liberal Reagan crushed the cardigan-wearing Carter by promising economic vitality over malaise, Democrats now have a chance to flip the script—if only they can drop their annoying cultural politics and reclaim the mantle of middle-class prosperity. By owning the American Dream, Rauch and Wehner suggest, you also own American politics. Given the Republican abandonment of growth politics, they argue, the seeds of a Democratic revival have already been sown. Now all the party needs is somebody with Reagan’s messaging genius. Mark Cuban, perhaps?1. Democrats Are Abandoning Anti-Trump Strategy for Positive MessagingThe 19 Democrats interviewed for the article were explicitly asked not to mention Trump—a "disciplining exercise" that revealed the party's recognition that pure opposition isn't

How to write about the kaleidoscopic Sixties in the gloom of 2025? According to James Grady, author of the classic Six Days of the Condor and the new mid-century novel American Sky, the key is calibrating nostalgia with unflinching honesty about the past's complexities. "You can't just write about the past and not have a focus also on current times and really the future," Grady explains. The novelist’s approach involves fictionalizing personal experiences while ensuring memories of traumatic events like the JFK or MLK assassinations connect with the painful realities of MAGA America. Rather than romanticizing the Sixties, Grady emphasizes the civil rights violence, the generational divide, and the "silent majority's" anxieties alongside the era's optimism. Grady’s goal isn't to escape into nostalgia but to help readers understand how past dreams and failures shaped our present moment, making history a lens for understanding America’s current challenges.1. Historical Fiction Must Connect Past to Present "You c