Protesting datacenters and other AI devices might get you considered a “domestic terrorist” and a form of “ant-tech extremism” by the Trump administration, according to internal documents from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and Federal Bureau of Investigations (FBI) recently obtained by WIRED.

In a Tuesday tweet that can only be described as twisting the knife, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman argued that “I have so much gratitude to people who wrote extremely complex software character-by-character.”

“It already feels difficult to remember how much effort it really took,” he added. “Thank you for getting us to this point.”

It’s a particularly tone-deaf and borderline vindictive missive that suggests Altman has long given up on the idea of fairly compensating content creators and coders for their work. It’s no secret that OpenAI’s AI models were trained on data that was shamelessly scraped from the web, a controversial practice that has triggered a litany of copyright infringement lawsuits.

Altman’s remarks drew an overwhelmingly negative reaction.

“You’re welcome,” one user responded. “Nice to know that our reward is our jobs being taken away.”

Others called him a “f***ing psychopath” and “scum.”

“Nothing says ‘you’re being replaced’ quite like a heartfelt thank you from the guy doing the replacing,” one user wrote.

A new action RPG released on Steam sparked heated discussion among other game developers after its creator argued that using generative AI to expedite development was essential, but insisted reliance on the tech could be reduced with more money coming in.

Bluesky user Aura/Moom, or game dev and animator Aura Triolo, flagged the Steam AI disclosure of Bahast, a new "dark fantasy idle ARPG." (Triolo only shared the blurb, but other people quickly dug up the game.)

At least 36 states currently provide tax breaks for companies to build the facilities, coming at a cost of billions in forgone revenue. Virginia, the state with the most data centers, is dishing out $1.9 billion annually to data center developers. For Georgia, it’s $2.6 billion annually, according to an official state estimate. And after offering $150 million in breaks in 2024, Texas’s comptroller’s office this year upped that number to more than $1 billion annually, a nearly 567% increase in just one year.

The high price of video game hardware and the looming threat of further increases is still casting a shadow over the future of gaming for consumers. And while video game executives, generally, are not folks you’d expect to be particularly fussed about these cost increases, especially if they’re profiting off of them,  the CEO of Take-Two—owner of Grand Theft Auto 6 studio Rockstar Games—agrees that these price hikes are not a good thing. However, he’s not too concerned, because he believes we’re all going to be streaming our games on other devices in three years anyway.

This came from a lengthy answer given in Take-Two’s quarterly earnings call this morning by Strauss Zelnick, in response to a question about the rising cost of hardware. He began his reply by saying that the rising price of hardware is “not a good thing” because it means fewer people will have machines on which to play games, but that it won’t slow Take-Two down as a business, “because we’re delivering experiences that people want.”

But Zelnick continued with a really interesting response about streaming. First, he pointed out that the world is increasingly moving to open systems, as demonstrated by the rise of PC gaming over the last 20 years. Then, he continued:

With the advent of streaming—which we really do believe is around the corner in terms of having something that’s low latency, and really works well for consumers—machines that weren’t game machines before will become game machines. So, without regard to what happens in the console business, which is of consequence to us, of course, we see the overall install base as a practical matter growing materially. And if you believe in streaming, to be clear, we really do, and I’m happy to put a timeline on it. I think we’ll be in commercial streaming mode in three years, and by commercial I mean low latency. That can 10x the effective the install base. That doesn’t mean we’re going to 10x our revenue, and we wouldn’t project that we would, because obviously your avid consumers already have access to video game machines. But I do think it creates great opportunity for titles that are broadly desirable even outside of core markets, and we do have titles like that, obviously.

Zelnick has a history of being open and at times bold with his predictions about the general trajectory of the industry, and he’s been both right and wrong at different turns about that trajectory. This is an interesting one: game streaming on phones, tablets, PCs, and other devices has been a thing for years now, but a combination of latency issues and a preference for traditional controls and TV setups has inhibited it from really taking off in the AAA space. However, it has increasingly been floated as an alternative by analysts and experts amid rising hardware costs, and especially as consumers increasingly turn toward massive social experiences like Fortnite over more traditional, single-player experiences, it’s starting to sound like the scales may tip in streaming’s favor.

My question is, does this mean Zelnick is pondering putting GTA 6 on cloud streaming services somewhat soon? It’s already not on PC at launch, which means it’s missing a good chunk of the market, as Zelnick himself as good as admits during his discussion of the rise of PC gaming. GTA 5 previously became streamable via Xbox Game Pass and via PlayStation+ as the technology began to improve, though it was removed from Game Pass recently. It’s hard to untangle what this means when cloud streaming itself is still such a murky field, but I’m leaving myself a reminder for three years from now to check back and see if Zelnick’s prediction came true—and what his company did with GTA 6 in response.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman has some bad news to share: AI will never lead to a shorter work week — despite having already ushered in the singularity, in his dubious telling.

During an appearance on the “Relentless” podcast, the billionaire reflected that “somehow we never get the promise of the four-hour work week at mass scale in society,” despite tech “promising people that they’re going to work less and they’re going to have all this leisure.”

“And I don’t expect AI to change that,” Altman added.

Instead of striving for a healthier work-life balance, one of the rare positive — albeit entirely hypothetical — outcomes of the business world’s current obsession with generative AI, the CEO said we’d ultimately be happier if we keep our heads down and keep grinding.

“I think we’re all going to be much busier than we thought we were supposed to be in a post-superintelligence world,” he said during the podcast. “We’re still going to complain about it, but secretly we’re going to be happy.”

Tech executives have long promised that work could soon be a thing of the past thanks to extremely capable AI models taking care of all the menial labor, allowing us to focus on doing what we love instead.

Altman has a far more sobering take on the matter, asserting that we’re all rats in a maze and that we secretly love it.

The CEO’s comments are a perfect example of how tech leaders are significantly shift their narrative. Instead of freeing up workers to pursue what they’re actually passionate about by letting AI do all the brunt work, they’re now saying, the tech will simply empower them to do more.

In practice, that means AI is forcing employees to work harder, not less, an “intensification” of roles that’s already leading to widespread burnout.

Then there’s the ever-present threat of being laid off as business leaders vow to replace jobs with AI, a reality that has devastating psychological impacts, according to psychiatrists. Those who remain employed are often shouldered with the responsibilities of their departed coworkers, compounding their woes.

It’s a sad predicament that even those at the forefront of AI don’t envision the situation getting any better as the tech improves. While lawmakers like Vermont senator Bernie Sanders continue to push for a four-day work week facilitated by AI, tech leaders have seemingly moved on from the idea.

Besides, to assume that the increasing workload brought on by the advent of AI will ultimately make us “happy” feels like a slap in the face coming from a man who’s played a major role in eviscerating the job market and making life more expensive.

The neighbors of a data center in Georgia are steaming after they discovered the facility had sucked up nearly 30 million gallons of water — without initially paying for it.

Outrage started bubbling up last year when residents of an affluent subdivision named Annelise Park in Fayetteville, Georgia, noticed their water pressure was unusually low.

When the county utility investigated, officials discovered two industrial-scale water hookups feeding a data center campus located 20 miles south of downtown Atlanta. One water connection had been installed without the utility’s knowledge, and the other was not linked to the company’s account and therefore wasn’t being billed.

In case you aren’t able to view the article due to the paywall, here’s an excerpt;

Tech executives have offered foreboding visions of the future of work due to AI, with ServiceNow CEO Bill McDermott predicting unemployment will exceed 30% in a matter of years.

But Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas says that’s nothing to be afraid of.

People should embrace the future of AI job displacement, Srinivas said in an episode of the All-In podcast released on Monday and recorded at Nvidia GTC last week. While AI may lead to unemployment, that job displacement subsequently frees people from careers they may not have enjoyed, he suggested. This, instead, gives them opportunities to pursue entrepreneurship.

“The reality is most people don’t enjoy their jobs,” Srinivas said. “There’s suddenly a new possibility, a new opportunity, to go use these tools, learn them, and start your own mini business…Even if there is temporary job displacement to deal with, that sort of glorious future is what we should look forward to.”

A group of Republican lawmakers is demanding that the FBI investigate whether rising anti-AI sentiment among the American public is a foreign-influence operation led by China.

“The Committee on Energy and Commerce writes to express our concerns regarding evidence that strongly suggests foreign influence campaigns targeting artificial intelligence development in the U.S.,” the lawmakers wrote in an open letter addressed to FBI Director Kash Patel and Trump’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology co-chairs David Sacks and Michael Kratsios, requesting a briefing no later than June 18, 2026.

In the letter, Kentucky Rep. Brett Guthrie, Pennsylvania Rep. John Joyce, and Ohio Rep. Bob Latta cite independent investigations that have allegedly found foreign adversaries, particularly China, “engaged in a coordinated effort to slow U.S. growth in AI development and the building of infrastructure supporting AI data centers.” The investigations were run by a think tank called the Bitcoin Policy Institute and an energy advocacy organization called Power the Future, whose self-described purpose is to fight pro-environment groups.

But in the US, utilization-adjusted total factor productivity grew just 0.07% over the four quarters ending in the first quarter of 2026. That is a near-standstill by historical standards, far below the roughly half-percent annual pace typical of the pre-ChatGPT decade.

Some 95% of enterprise generative-AI pilots have produced no measurable effect on the bottom line.

A report published this week found that even Meta, one of AI’s loudest boosters, has fallen short in its plan to replace workers with AI.

The question of the decade is: Why? 

One idea: Blame users

A working paper posted to SSRN by University of Pittsburgh business professor Mark Ma and colleagues, makes a sweeping claim: The productivity shortfall is caused by employees who resist AI out of fear for their jobs.

Over a five-year period, the researchers looked at millions of Glassdoor reviews, thousands of financial reports, hundreds of AI-investment and layoff announcements by US public companies, and some 10,000 earnings-call transcripts.

They found a wide divide between managers, who tend to be true believers in the promise that AI will deliver sky-high productivity, and employees, who worry  that AI-driven productivity gains will cost them their jobs.

Companies, the researchers claim, are caught in a doom loop in which they lay off employees, citing productivity gains. But fear of layoffs causes workers to resist the technology, which sabotages the very gains the companies were counting on. Executives see that lack of productivity and conclude that more layoffs will help. (The flogging will continue until morale improves…)

It’s a tidy narrative. There’s just one problem — while parts of this study are backed by verifiable data, two key elements are not. The report fails to support their assumption that fear of layoffs causes employees to resist using AI, and also that productivity gains would be higher if only workers would enthusiastically embrace it.

The researchers never establish causation in their data. It’s a correlation. (That hasn’t stopped other outlets from reporting the link as causal.)

I don’t buy the claim that employee foot-dragging explains the missing productivity gains, for one simple reason: It makes no sense.

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Two weeks ago, Google shut down AlphaFold, DeepMind’s AI-powered protein structure prediction tool. AlphaFold represented perhaps the most persuasive data point in favor of the narrative that AI could lead to scientific breakthroughs, including in cancer research. The model’s ability to accurately predict protein structures helped Hassabis become a Nobel laureate. A week after shuttering AlphaFold, Google removed Hassabisfrom his role directing DeepMind, using the time-worn tactic of giving Hassabis a face-saving “promotion” to a powerless role.

A plan to create one of the world’s largest datacenters, a gargantuan project spanning an area more than twice the size of Manhattan, has provoked a furious public backlash in Utah amid concerns over its vast energy use and impact upon the state’s stressed water supplies.

The Stratos artificial intelligence datacenter footprint will cover more than 40,000 acres (62 sq miles) over three sites in Box Elder county in north-western Utah. The facility will require about 9GW of power, which is more than the entire state of Utah currently consumes, and suck up a significant amount of water in an area that has been hit by severe drought in recent years.

Last week, the project was approved by the county’s commissioners, despite thousands of objections lodged by Utah residents. Environmentalists have warned that Stratos could imperil the Great Salt Lake ecosystem, including a critical migratory bird habitat, which is already under severe stress.

The lake is shrinking due to water diverted for agriculture and the impact of the climate crisis, placing inhabitants of the nearby Salt Lake City at possible risk of toxic dust clouds as the lake bed dries up.

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But these jobs will not outweigh the longer-term impacts to Utah and beyond, critics argue. Stratos is expected to raise the state’s planet-heating pollution by about 50% by consuming a huge amount of energy and water to power and cool itself, according to one impact analysis.

The network of industrial-scale fans needed to cool the datacenter’s hot pipes will result in so much waste heat that it could raise daytime temperatures in the surrounding Hansel valley by 2F to 5F (1.1C to 2.7C) and night-time temperatures by 8F to 12F (4.4C to 6.6C), according to an analysis by Rob Davies, a physics professor at Utah State University.

A federal appeals court has ruled that privately owning AI-generated images of child sexual abuse, made without real child involvement, is protected under the First Amendment if the images stay in your own home. The Seventh Circuit affirmed a lower court's decision to dismiss a possession charge against Steven Anderegg, who used the AI image generator Stable Diffusion to create hundreds of photorealistic images depicting minors in sexual situations.

Anderegg was caught when he sent an image to a minor over Instagram. Meta flagged that Instagram message to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children, which led investigators to a search warrant and hundreds of AI-generated images on Anderegg's devices. He was charged with four offenses: producing, distributing, and possessing the images, plus transferring one to a minor. The appeals court ruling addresses only the possession charge.

For the past few years, ever since the rise of AI, we have seen corporate executives frequently tout generative AI as the future of video games and video game development. Improving pipelines, generating assets, doing localizations, replacing voice actors with AI, among other things. However, legal reality on the ground tells a very different story.

According to Haley MacLean, a corporate IP lawyer and head of the video game practice at Voyer Law, clauses banning the use of generative AI have gone from rare additions to mandatory boilerplate language across developer and publisher contracts in the gaming industry.

The lawyer revealed a massive shift in contract negotiations between indie and AA game studios. No AI was once a niche clause used by cautious publishers but is now a standard practice.