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Nov 5Thu
  1. TechCrunch · AI58

    AI PACs spent millions trying to shape Congress — here’s how they fared

    AI-focused political groups supporting and opposing the industry spent millions on Tuesday's midterms with mixed results, including $4.8 million by American Mission and Building the Future backing South Carolina Senate candidate Darline Graham, who lost. Anthropic-backed Public First had more success with Democratic candidates and gave $3 million to a PAC supporting California state Sen. Scott Wiener, while Guardrails Alliance spent over $1 million each opposing two candidates who lost. LTF said it sees primaries as a more effective use of its money, having spent $27.38 million there, and plans to keep spending in 2028.

  2. TechCrunch · AI40

    OpenAI is already trying to shape the 2028 election

    OpenAI chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane published an essay comparing AI's economic impact to the New Deal and urging politicians to develop policies addressing Americans' AI concerns, laying out five priorities spanning worker protections, education, AI safety and data center development. Critics including AI Now Institute's Kate Brennan said the rhetoric marks a shift from OpenAI's prior deregulatory agenda but that the proposals largely encourage AI adoption and infrastructure expansion without binding requirements for sharing AI-generated wealth or holding companies accountable. The essay follows a Democratic midterm victory driven by cost-of-living frustration, with opposition to data centers emerging as a bipartisan concern in several races.

  3. Ars Technica · AI78

    Big Tech claims voters’ AI backlash is “anti-Trump” not “anti-tech”

    Voters in the US midterm elections backed candidates and ballot measures restricting AI and data centers, with 38 of 44 data center measures across 10 states passing, and Democrats winning governor races in Texas, Arizona, Georgia and Ohio. Industry figures such as Chamber of Progress CEO Adam Kovacevich downplayed the results as an "anti-Trump wave" rather than an "anti-tech mandate," while civil rights advocates and analysts described it as the first true "AI election." The article also reports that a slowdown in US data center buildout could benefit China and that Elon Musk was among the biggest losers on election day.

    Why it matters: It maps the post-election shift in US AI and data center policy and the industry's competing interpretations of the results.

  4. MIT Technology Review · AI67

    Texas was the new epicenter of the AI data center buildout. That might be kaput.

    Democrats won Texas' US Senate and governor races and took control of the state House for the first time in 24 years, with data centers a central campaign issue; governor-elect Gina Hinojosa pushed for a full moratorium after previously supporting tax breaks for data centers in 2023. The article notes massive projects underway, including the 1,820-megawatt Stargate Frontier in Shackelford County and the 6,400-megawatt Nexus Hubbard intended mostly to serve Anthropic, and that Governor Abbott directed a key state regulator on September 21 to halt data center permits. It adds that no single state office decides project outcomes, so local officials and construction unions may complicate follow-through on a moratorium.

  5. 404 Media74

    American Voters Overwhelmingly Reject AI Data Centers

    In the midterm elections, data center-related proposals appeared on ballots in more than 40 races across 13 states, and voters opposed them in 38 and counting, with six cities banning data centers outright and 12 capping their megawatt draw. Candidates who backed data centers lost nationwide, including Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, who lost his bid for a fourth term by more than 700,000 votes to Gina Hinojosa, who made his data center stance central to her campaign. Local Progress's Michael Whitesides said the results show people don't see the promised benefits of data centers and are seeing higher costs, while Elon Musk posted on X that "Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now."

  6. TechCrunch · AI74

    Google faces backlash for plan that would turn off Search for schools that restrict AI

    Google announced that K-12 schools using its education software must opt in to AI tools or students will lose access to Search, drawing criticism from politicians including Bernie Sanders, who called it "extortion," and Lina Khan, who called it anti-competitive. Google responded that Gemini, Gemini Notebook, and Search will be off by default and that schools can enable each individually, and said it is working on a "Guided Learning" tool for student accounts.

  7. The Verge · AI74

    Data centers lost the midterms

    Voters elected candidates favoring data center moratoriums and passed local ballot measures restricting development, with 76% of NBC News Election Day respondents saying they opposed data centers in their communities. Of 45 local data center ballot measures, 33 results as of Wednesday morning will restrict development, including moratoriums in Wells, Maine and bans in several Ohio cities and El Dorado, Kansas. Candidates supporting moratoriums won races including Texas governor-elect Gina Hinojosa and Michigan senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed, though some races went to candidates favoring more limited restrictions.

Nov 4Wed
  1. Hacker News AI58

    AI data centers comprehensively defeated at US midterm elections

    In U.S. midterm elections, voters in several counties backed measures restricting data center development, with 33 such measures already passing and six more leading, according to Data Centers on the Ballot. Only one measure, in Harwood, North Dakota, which adds an extra review process for industrial projects including data centers, has failed, while five others have no posted results. The article calls this a major setback for the Trump administration's push for AI development and cites polling showing 70% of Americans oppose AI data center build-outs.

  2. Hacker News AI58

    Crypto and AI's $250M election goes sideways

    Crypto and AI companies spent $250 million in the midterms, but of the twelve competitive races called so far, the side backed by crypto and AI super PACs lost nine, spending $74.7 million on losing sides versus $28.3 million on winning ones. Losses included the Ohio Senate race, where Democrat Sherrod Brown overcame more than $64 million in crypto money, and South Carolina's Senate race, where Annie Andrews beat Darline Graham despite nearly $4.1 million in AI money. In the 40 safe races with crypto or AI PAC spending called so far, their picks went 40 for 40.

  3. The Decoder71

    Schools that turn off Google's AI will lose search too starting in 2027

    Starting in early 2027, Google will require schools to accept AI features for student accounts or lose access to Google Search entirely, with Gemini, Gemini Notebook, and Search off by default but each individually switchable. Schools that enable search must choose between full AI overviews and AI chat, or a "Guided Learning" mode; a version of search without AI is no longer offered. Google education VP Chris Phillips said search and AI are too tightly fused to separate, and education professor Morgan Polikoff called the move a case of the tech industry pushing AI onto people.

  4. Hacker News AI65

    AI stocks slide as Texas governor result raises data center risks

    AI stocks fell overnight as Democrats, seen as backers of data center moratoriums, won midterm races including the Texas governorship, where Gina Hinojosa was projected to defeat incumbent Greg Abbott. Nasdaq-100 futures dropped 0.8%, while CoreWeave fell 7%, Nebius 4%, SpaceX 6% and Oracle 4% on Robinhood. Wells Fargo estimates 27% of planned US data center gigawatts are in Texas, and strategists warned a Democratic win there could be a "left-tail event" for the AI trade.

  7. The Verge · AI38

    The biggest modding site in PC gaming is taking a stance on AI

    Nexus Mods announced that mod authors must now declare whether AI was used in their work, with "AI-assisted" mods also requiring a public explanation of how and where AI was used, and AI tags made more prominent on mod pages. Site owner Victor Folmann said the platform is "pro-human creativity" but won't ban AI-generated mods outright, arguing a ban would only push AI use underground; Nexus Mods also said it won't use mods to train AI or sell or license them to anyone doing so. Mod authors have 60 days, ending January 2nd, to update existing mods before enforcement begins, and the site is adding controls to hide AI-generated content and limits on bulk uploads.

  9. Hacker News AI72

    NYT demands Brave shut down its paywall blocker and end deals with AI firms

    The New York Times and other newspaper companies sued Brave Software, alleging the browser maker illegally bypasses paywalls and sells stolen news content to AI companies including Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere. The suit, filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, accuses Brave of direct, contributory, and vicarious copyright infringement and of violating the DMCA by circumventing paywall access controls. It also claims Brave's browser blocks ads on The Times's site and shows its own instead, depriving the publisher of digital advertising revenue.

  10. Hacker News AI38

    Democrats run more anti-tech ads amid AI boom

    An analysis by the Tech Oversight Project shared with Semafor found Democrats in more than 130 federal and gubernatorial races aired anti-tech or anti-data center ads this cycle, up from just two Democratic ads on those topics from 2020 to 2024, and used such messages four times as often as Republicans. The ads, which appeared in nearly every battleground state and three toss-up governor races, blamed AI for price-gouging, harm to children and healthcare denial, while data center-focused ads pressed Republicans on water use and threats to farmland. The group, mostly funded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar's philanthropic network, said Democrats have "potentially found a winning message" and urged them to reject "business as usual in Washington, Silicon Valley fundraisers, and light-touch approaches."

  11. Ars Technica · AI58

    Google will let schools skip AI tools, but they have to give up search, too

    Google says schools using its education products will be opted out of AI tools by default, with administrators able to manually enable them when the changes roll out in the coming months. The affected products include Gemini, Gemini Notebook, Gemini in Classroom, and Google Search, and schools cannot pick and choose—they must allow all the AI or none of it. Google executives have said Google Search is AI search, with most searches now showing an AI Overview at the top.

  12. The Verge · AI71

    Google is entirely disabling Search in schools that don’t want AI

    Google told The New York Times that it will completely turn off Search in schools that reject its AI features, and a Tuesday education update said Gemini, Gemini Notebook, Gemini in Classroom, and Google Search "will be entirely off" for K-12 student accounts unless administrators explicitly turn them on. Administrators cannot disable Gemini-powered features without also disabling Search, and VP of education Chris Phillips said schools that disable the AI features "will not have access to search" and will see a message from their school. Google is also embedding its Guided Learning feature into AI Overviews in Search, with testing in select US schools starting this month.

  13. TechCrunch · AI64

    Google will let schools disable its AI tools, but not without sacrificing Search

    Google announced it will disable AI tools for K-12 students next year unless school administrators explicitly turn them on, affecting Gemini, NotebookLM, Gemini in Classroom, and Google Search. Because AI features are now integrated into Search, schools that restrict AI entirely will lose access to Google Search, a Google VP told The New York Times. The change was announced alongside the launch of Guided Learning in schools, an AI tutor tool unveiled earlier this year.

  14. Hacker News AI40

    How governments worldwide are shaping what AI can say about politics

    A Vanderbilt researcher and colleagues examined AI regulation in 12 countries and regions and found governments often use existing national security or anti-state propaganda laws, rather than new AI laws, to control what AI models say about politics. The piece cites examples including India's response to a Gemini answer about Prime Minister Modi, China's requirement that models uphold "socialist core values," Turkish court rulings against Grok posts, and a Vietnamese prosecution over AI-faked leader images, as well as cross-border effects of EU rules and a 2025 U.S. executive order on "truth-seeking" AI. It concludes that voters should treat chatbot answers about elections as a starting point rather than a substitute for critical thinking.

  15. The Verge · AI22

    Midterm elections 2026: all the news

    This roundup covers the 2026 US midterm elections, which will determine the scope of President Donald Trump's power in his final two years and signal voter priorities ahead of 2028, with races shaped by affordability issues and tech topics including data centers and energy costs, AI safety, surveillance expansion via Flock, and California's billionaire wealth tax. It lists reported outcomes and developments, including Susan Collins conceding her Senate seat, a Democrat projected to win an Ohio seat, Texas turning blue, and a data center backlash that was not enough to flip Florida, along with voting-machine and monitoring issues and tech spending figures.

  16. TechCrunch · AI58

    Apple restricts dating apps and AI companions to users 18 and up

    Apple announced to developers that it will require all apps offering dating or romantic relationship features to carry an 18+ rating, and starting November 16 developers must add new content descriptors so age ratings reflect app features. The policy could also affect AI companion apps like Character.AI and Replika, which let users create AI friends, lovers and fantasy characters. Apps must also indicate if they share a user's real-world location with another person or group, and in Brazil family location-sharing apps can request an official rating from the MJSP instead of the A16 rating required by local law.

Nov 3Tue
  1. Hacker News AI34

    'Our Risk, Their Reward': Zohran Mamdani on AI and Data Centers

    In a WIRED interview ahead of the midterms, New York City mayor Zohran Mamdani said the bipartisan movement opposing data centers gives him hope, framing current AI governance as "our risk, their reward" and warning of similarities between the housing bubble and AI's place in the economy. He said he does not trust "the Sam Altmans of the world," supports New York state's one-year pause on data center construction, and pointed to his administration's proposed moratorium banning generative AI for students from 2K through eighth grade.

  2. The Verge · AI42

    OpenAI is quietly renaming data centers ‘compute campuses’

    OpenAI used the term "compute campus" repeatedly, and "data center" only twice, in its roughly 900-word announcement of a new "Grid Protectors Program" starting with a site in Effingham County, Georgia, aimed at addressing concerns about strain on local power grids. Critics including PauseAI US's Holly Elmore and the NAACP's Abre' Conner told The Verge the rebrand does not address environmental and community harms, with Elmore calling the electricity announcement "woefully tone deaf." The timing follows an Axios report that OpenAI planned to rebrand data centers as "AI compute campuses" as part of a policy and PR push after Tuesday's midterms.

  3. The Decoder60

    Nvidia pushes cloud customers to cut back on China business

    Nvidia has told some cloud customers to take on less business from Chinese companies, guidance meant to push cloud providers, including Nvidia-backed neoclouds, toward a more diverse customer mix, The Information reports. The directive is not mandatory and applies to future contracts rather than existing deals, and cloud customers are also being asked to disclose the identity of end users accessing the chips. According to the Financial Times, the instruction was communicated verbally through sales reps and regional teams, targeting a gap in U.S. export controls that restrict chip shipments but generally do not cover remote access through cloud services.

  4. MIT Technology Review · AI58

    Here’s who is falling in line for Trump’s “Super Intelligence” loyalty test

    After Trump signed an executive order rebranding artificial intelligence as “Super Intelligence,” the term has appeared in some government solicitations and websites, though the Pentagon, FTC, and HHS have used the old terminology or variants. Among tech leaders who signed the White House Accord on Super Intelligence, only Zuckerberg and Musk used the term consistently on earnings calls, and Trump criticized the Wall Street Journal for not adopting it. The piece argues that turning the terminology into a loyalty test would undermine the emerging national conversation about AI.

  5. Hacker News AI31

    OpenAI considers rebranding data centers to 'AI compute campuses"

    OpenAI is reportedly preparing a public relations campaign to shape how Americans view artificial intelligence, including a proposal to rename its data centers "AI Compute Campuses," Axios reports. The effort comes ahead of the November 3 U.S. midterm elections and is part of a broader push to influence the AI debate before the 2028 presidential race. Chris Lehane, OpenAI's chief global affairs officer, said the midterms would be "a bit of a movie trailer for what you're going to see in 2028" and expects AI to be a major issue as it raises concerns over jobs, the economy and the environment.

  6. TechCrunch · AI58

    Data centers are now a midterm issue, even in Brooklyn

    At a Newsreel-hosted midterm event in a Brooklyn warehouse, a panel on data centers drew boos when the moderator asked who was pro-AI data center, and the topic dominated nearly every conversation. A Data Center Watch report cited in the piece found almost $200 billion in data center projects were delayed, stalled, or blocked in the first half of 2026 due to political and community opposition, while states including Pennsylvania, Georgia, Texas, New York, and Virginia weigh more guardrails. Newsreel founder Jack Brewster said AI has become an election issue for regular voters, with backlash in rural communities about feeling replaced and in Brooklyn more about who gets rich from it.

  7. TechCrunch · AI58

    New York Times and other outlets sue web browser Brave over alleged content scraping

    The New York Times sued Brave on Monday in federal court in Manhattan, alleging the privacy-focused browser company scraped its copyrighted content and distributed it to AI companies including Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere. The Daily News, Chicago Tribune, and Orlando Sentinel filed a similar lawsuit the same day. The Times, which has also sued OpenAI and Perplexity, seeks an injunction and damages, alleging Brave built an index of more than 30 billion webpages and offers a feature that bypasses paywalls.

  8. Hacker News AI58

    South Korea targets ' highest performance' sovereign AI model

    South Korean President Lee Jae Myung unveiled the country's largest ever budget, with 2027 spending rising 12.8% to 820.9 trillion won ($610.14 billion), including 21.3 trillion won for semiconductors, physical AI and AI data centers, nearly double the 2026 level. A separate 4.7 trillion won will go toward developing a sovereign AI model that Lee described as having the "world's highest performance," alongside training 2,000 semiconductor specialists and expanding AI education. Lee said the higher spending would result in "virtually no net increase in government debt," with defense expenditure rising 8.2% to 73.3 trillion won.

  9. Hacker News AI66

    The New York Times sues Brave web browser for AI scraping and bypassing paywalls

    The New York Times and other publications including the New York Daily News, Chicago Tribune, and Orlando Sentinel have sued Brave Software, alleging it scraped their content to build an index sold to AI companies such as Anthropic, Perplexity, Mistral, xAI, and Cohere, and that its browser lets users bypass paywalls. The complaint says Brave never sought permission or compensated the publishers, while an NYT spokesperson said the suit aims to hold Brave accountable for stealing content. Perplexity's chief communications officer disputed the suit in a statement to The Verge, and Brave, Anthropic, Mistral, SpaceXAI, and Cohere did not immediately reply to requests for comment.

  10. Hacker News AI42

    UK and Germany to jointly develop military AI in 2027

    British Defence Secretary Wes Streeting said the UK and Germany plan to test, develop and eventually deploy AI in their armed forces together, expanding the existing joint Cyber Lighthouse cybersecurity project to cover AI. Government and industry representatives from both countries are due to meet in spring 2027 to work out how the plan will be carried out, with no specific AI systems, programmes or budgets yet announced. Streeting said German companies had committed £800 million (about €956 million) to the UK defence industry since a 2024 defence pact, including Munich-based Helsing, which opened a Plymouth factory last year to build AI-powered underwater gliders to track hostile submarines.

  11. Exponential View28

    📈 Political ads turn against data centers

    The US Census Bureau's business survey now asks firms whether they use "Super Intelligence," citing voice recognition as an example, with 24.6% of firms saying they use it in early October, up from 17.3% in late November 2025. Only 3% of political ads mentioning data centers in October supported them, while 57% opposed them and the rest took no clear stance. Semiconductor parts accounted for almost half of South Korea's exports in October.

Nov 2Mon
  1. Simon Willison22

    The U.S. Census Bureau and “Super Intelligence”

    The author revisits the Census Bureau's Business Trends and Outlook Survey (BTOS) AI adoption data, noting that a November 17, 2025 wording change from "producing goods or services" to "any of its business functions" makes responses before and after that date not directly comparable, with large companies' "yes" answers rising from about 12% in September 2025 to about 40% by October 2026. Beginning with the October 19, 2026 collection, the survey question was changed again due to Executive Order 14434, now asking about "Super Intelligence or SI (formerly referred to as Artificial Intelligence or AI)," with the first results under the new wording due for publication on Thursday.

  2. Hacker News AI32

    Show Your ID to Use ChatGPT? How New York's New AI Law Ends Online Anonymity

    The article, shared via a Hacker News submission with 2 points and no comments, discusses a new New York AI law and its implications for online anonymity, framed around the question of whether users would need to show ID to use ChatGPT. The supplied material contains only the title and link metadata, so no further details of the law or its provisions are available.

  3. The Decoder38

    OpenAI prepares lobbying blitz for a post-midterm Washington

    OpenAI is preparing a political lobbying and PR push after the US midterms, bracing for a tougher fight in Washington if Democrats win control of the House, according to Axios. Policy chief Chris Lehane plans to steer the AI debate through 2028 around the idea that AI doesn't replace people, proposing binding safety rules he calls "speed limits," and the company wants to rebrand data centers as "AI Compute Campuses" while promising economic benefits to host communities. Lehane says OpenAI's top priority in the new Congress is fast-tracking safety rules for frontier models.

  4. Hacker News AI82

    China's First Frontier AI Export Controls: Mofcom Announcement No. 48

    On October 16, 2026, MOFCOM and MOST issued Announcement No. 48, proposing to add 40 technologies to China's export catalogue—23 of them in AI, covering frontier model weights, agent architectures, and offensive cyber capability—while an interim pre-export registration requirement is already in effect. The catalogue additions are a draft open for comment until November 15, 2026, whereas registration applies now, including to exports already started but not yet complete, and is triggered by licensing for overseas use or changes of ownership or control. MOFCOM says API, app, web, SaaS, and lightweight on-device use do not count as exporting a large model, but local deployment of a restricted model outside China does, and open-sourcing a new restricted model requires reporting under automatic licensing.

    Why it matters: It maps a new Chinese outbound control regime onto concrete enterprise exposure points—self-hosted deployments, intra-group code sharing, and M&A—making it useful for compliance and security teams tracking frontier AI supply-chain risk.

  5. Hacker News AI28

    Empires of AI – The Rise and Fall of a New Global Order

    This essay argues that China and the United States have each built empire-like dominions over AI's foundational inputs—models, chips, infrastructure, and capital—giving them leverage over global innovation and knowledge. It contends that the decisive question is not who reaches artificial general intelligence first but who can finance the race, since both powers face fiscal strains: the U.S. crossed the "Ferguson limit" in 2024, paying more in interest than on defense, while China's AI debt is sovereign and its local governments borrow mainly to roll over old debt.

  6. TechCrunch · AI25

    OpenAI might rebrand its data centers as ‘AI compute campuses’

    Axios reports that OpenAI is preparing a post-midterm "PR blitz," and its chief global affairs officer Chris Lehane described proposals including AI "speed limits," helping people see AI as empowering, pushing the U.S. toward global standards, and rebranding data centers as "AI compute campuses." Lehane called the debate around data centers "good and healthy" and said communities should hold companies accountable so they truly benefit from these projects.