OpenAI's chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane thinks the 2028 presidential election could be a defining moment for AI. And he wants politicians to start developing policies that address Americans' concerns about the technology, rather than simply paying lip service to anti-AI sentiment and the backlash against data centers. In a new essay, Lehane compares AI's potential to reshape the economy to President Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, the 1930s set of federal programs and reforms enacted after industrialization and the Great Depression shattered the old economic order. He observes that Americans today feel similarly anxious about losing control over their economic futures and urges politicians to find a 'compelling third path' that allows people to share in AI's benefits. He lays out five policy priorities, spanning worker protections and education to AI safety and data center development. The essay comes on the heels of a stunning Democratic victory in the midterm elections, in which Democrats flipped control of Congress amid widespread voter frustration over the cost of living. Kate Brennan, who leads AI and corporate power policy at the AI Now Institute, told TechCrunch that Lehane's rhetoric marks a notable shift from OpenAI's policy agenda last year, which focused on accelerating AI development, reducing regulatory barriers, and expanding infrastructure....

'[Fox] bears responsibility for these losses by constantly and consistently putting on the Dumocrat opposition, and worse,' the president wrote on Truth Social. Later in the night, he called in to Fox News, where he congratulated the Democrats on their results. Trump made clear that he doesn't think the historic blowout was a reflection of his popularity, writing, 'I wasn't on the Ballot and if I was, we would have won IN A LANDSLIDE!' He then posted a picture of a red baseball hat with the word VETO embossed on the front. Matt Walsh, a right-wing podcaster, called the results 'a political catastrophe of historic proportions' and Trump 'an 80-year-old lame-duck president.' Walsh blamed Trump's decision to start a war with Iran and his focus on trivial matters like attempting to rename artificial intelligence super intelligence and the White House ballroom. Mike Flynn, the disgraced former national security adviser who was among the most prominent voices pushing bogus conspiracies about the 2020 election being stolen, also blamed Trump, writing on X, 'Someone needs to look in a mirror.' Flynn also blamed Christians for not showing up to vote....

On Tuesday, Apple rolled out a potentially controversial set of Audio Intelligence features into testing with the first developer beta versions of iOS 27.3 and watchOS 27.3. The betas bring four new AI features that allow Apple Watch Series 12 wearers to detect important sounds, identify songs, catch up on conversations, and take notes. After just a day with Apple's Siri Recaps feature on my Apple Watch, I can already see how its value may ultimately outweigh any creepiness factor that comes from the AI-powered audio recording and summarization it provides. However, I also see areas where AI-assisted note-taking can go too far, capturing things that aren't worth remembering, and where there's room for improvement. The first two, sound and song detection, don't represent potential privacy concerns; they are designed to detect either important sounds ' like an alarm or doorbell ' or identify a song using Shazam's technology. The former helps deaf and hard-of-hearing users navigate the world, and the latter is something we've already done with our iPhone for nearly two decades now....

It was a bad night for data centers. In Ohio, Democrat Sherrod Brown, who has aired ads for months calling his opponent 'the face of data centers in Ohio,' cruised to victory to flip a Senate seat. Democrat Chris Pappas, who when seated will be the nation's first openly gay male senator, mentioned his opposition to data centers in his victory speech and drew massive boos from his crowd in New Hampshire'even though the state has no large-scale data centers under construction. Elsewhere, two separate Republicans named Derek and Derrick, whose Democratic opponents labeled them 'Data Center Derek' and 'DC Derrick,' suffered losses in House races in Ohio and Wisconsin, respectively. As part of last night's shocking blue tsunami, voters selected candidates with tough policies on data centers at all levels of government in a clear rebuke to the industry's buildout in states across the country. Almost a quarter of all voters told NBC News that data centers were 'crucial' to their vote, while nearly two-thirds said it was either a major or minor factor....