Latest from Vox
Vox
4 hours ago
- Business
- Vox
You can get unfathomably rich building AI. Should you?
is a senior writer at Future Perfect, Vox's effective altruism-inspired section on the world's biggest challenges. She explores wide-ranging topics like climate change, artificial intelligence, vaccine development, and factory farms, and also writes the Future Perfect newsletter. It's a good time to be a highly in-demand AI engineer. To lure leading researchers away from OpenAI and other competitors, Meta has reportedly offered pay packages totalling more than $100 million. Top AI engineers are now being compensated like football superstars. Few people will ever have to grapple with the question of whether to go work for Mark Zuckerberg's 'superintelligence' venture in exchange for enough money to never have to work again (Bloomberg columnist Matt Levine recently pointed out that this is kind of Zuckerberg's fundamental challenge: If you pay someone enough to retire after a single month, they might well just quit after a single month, right? You need some kind of elaborate compensation structure to make sure they can get unfathomably rich without simply retiring.) Future Perfect Explore the big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them. Sent twice a week. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. Most of us can only dream of having that problem. But many of us have occasionally had to navigate the question of whether to take on an ethically dubious job (Denying insurance claims? Shilling cryptocurrency? Making mobile games more habit-forming?) to pay the bills. For those working in AI, that ethical dilemma is supercharged to the point of absurdity. AI is a ludicrously high-stakes technology — both for good and for ill — with leaders in the field warning that it might kill us all. A small number of people talented enough to bring about superintelligent AI can dramatically alter the technology's trajectory. Is it even possible for them to do so ethically? AI is going to be a really big deal On the one hand, leading AI companies offer workers the potential to earn unfathomable riches and also contribute to very meaningful social good — including productivity-increasing tools that can accelerate medical breakthroughs and technological discovery, and make it possible for more people to code, design, and do any other work that can be done on a computer. On the other hand, well, it's hard for me to argue that the 'Waifu engineer' that xAI is now hiring for — a role that will be responsible for making Grok's risqué anime girl 'companion' AI even more habit-forming — is of any social benefit whatsoever, and I in fact worry that the rise of such bots will be to the lasting detriment of society. I'm also not thrilled about the documented cases of ChatGPT encouraging delusional beliefs in vulnerable users with mental illness. Much more worryingly, the researchers racing to build powerful AI 'agents' — systems that can independently write code, make purchases online, interact with people, and hire subcontractors for tasks — are running into plenty of signs that those AIs might intentionally deceive humans and even take dramatic and hostile action against us. In tests, AIs have tried to blackmail their creators or send a copy of themselves to servers where they can operate more freely. For now, AIs only exhibit that behavior when given precisely engineered prompts designed to push them to their limits. But with increasingly huge numbers of AI agents populating the world, anything that can happen under the right circumstances, however rare, will likely happen sometimes. Over the past few years, the consensus among AI experts has moved from 'hostile AIs trying to kill us is completely implausible' to 'hostile AIs only try to kill us in carefully designed scenarios.' Bernie Sanders — not exactly a tech hype man — is now the latest politician to warn that as independent AIs become more powerful, they might take power from humans. It's a 'doomsday scenario,' as he called it, but it's hardly a far-fetched one anymore. And whether or not the AIs themselves ever decide to kill or harm us, they might fall into the hands of people who do. Experts worry that AI will make it much easier both for rogue individuals to engineer plagues or plan acts of mass violence, and for states to achieve heights of surveillance over their citizens that they have long dreamed of but never before been able to achieve. This story was first featured in the Future Perfect newsletter. Sign up here to explore the big, complicated problems the world faces and the most efficient ways to solve them. Sent twice a week. In principle, a lot of these risks could be mitigated if labs designed and adhered to rock-solid safety plans, responding swiftly to signs of scary behavior among AIs in the wild. Google, OpenAI, and Anthropic do have safety plans, which don't seem fully adequate to me but which are a lot better than nothing. But in practice, mitigation often falls by the wayside in the face of intense competition between AI labs. Several labs have weakened their safety plans as their models came close to meeting pre-specified performance thresholds. Meanwhile, xAI, the creator of Grok, is pushing releases with no apparent safety planning whatsoever. Worse, even labs that start out deeply and sincerely committed to ensuring AI is developed responsibly have often changed course later because of the enormous financial incentives in the field. That means that even if you take a job at Meta, OpenAI, or Anthropic with the best of intentions, all of your effort toward building a good AI outcome could be redirected toward something else entirely. So should you take the job? I've been watching this industry evolve for seven years now. Although I'm generally a techno-optimist who wants to see humanity design and invent new things, my optimism has been tempered by witnessing AI companies openly admitting their products might kill us all, then racing ahead with precautions that seem wholly inadequate to those stakes. Increasingly, it feels like the AI race is steering off a cliff. Given all that, I don't think it's ethical to work at a frontier AI lab unless you have given very careful thought to the risks that your work will bring closer to fruition, and you have a specific, defensible reason why your contributions will make the situation better, not worse. Or, you have an ironclad case that humanity doesn't need to worry about AI at all, in which case, please publish it so the rest of us can check your work! When vast sums of money are at stake, it's easy to self-deceive. But I wouldn't go so far as to claim that literally everyone working in frontier AI is engaged in self-deception. Some of the work documenting what AI systems are capable of and probing how they 'think' is immensely valuable. The safety and alignment teams at DeepMind, OpenAI, and Anthropic have done and are doing good work. But anyone pushing for a plane to take off while convinced it has a 20 percent chance of crashing would be wildly irresponsible, and I see little difference in trying to build superintelligence as fast as possible. A hundred million dollars, after all, isn't worth hastening the death of your loved ones or the end of human freedom. In the end, it's only worth it if you can not just get rich off AI, but also help make it go well. It might be hard to imagine anyone who'd turn down mind-boggling riches just because it's the right thing to do in the face of theoretical future risks, but I know quite a few people who've done exactly that. I expect there will be more of them in the coming years, as more absurdities like Grok's recent MechaHitler debacle go from sci-fi to reality. And ultimately, whether or not the future turns out well for humanity may depend on whether we can persuade some of the richest people in history to notice something their paychecks depend on their not noticing: that their jobs might be really, really bad for the world.
Vox
6 hours ago
- Politics
- Vox
Trump is making Americans like immigrants again
is a senior politics reporter at Vox, where he covers the Democratic Party. He joined Vox in 2022 after reporting on national and international politics for the Atlantic's politics, global, and ideas teams, including the role of Latino voters in the 2020 election. For the past two years, Donald Trump and the Republican Party could reasonably claim to have broad support for their anti-immigrant agenda. The public wanted less immigration, Trump promised to provide it, and much of the public trusted him to act. But things look a lot different now that he's actually implementing that agenda. After a years-long surge in opposition to immigration, Americans' views seem to be getting more positive toward it, a score of new data suggest. And while there's still some support for some of Trump's policies, Americans are souring on the extreme parts of Trump's approach. Six months into Trump's term, the American public's tendency to swing in the opposite direction of the president's policy vision seems to be reaching immigration as well. And compounding this apparent 'thermostatic' shift is that it's happening as Trump actually achieves what he promised. Crossings at the southern border hit a historic low last month, and he has secured billions in additional funding for border security and expanded enforcement operations. Today, Explained Understand the world with a daily explainer, plus the most compelling stories of the day. Email (required) Sign Up By submitting your email, you agree to our Terms and Privacy Notice . This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply. What gives? Is the public really that fickle? Is Trump overreaching? And perhaps more importantly, will this shift be durable? The data we have offers some mixed answers, but it largely points in a worrisome direction for Trump and his party. As with the economy, government efficiency, foreign policy, and trade, Americans seemed to like Trump's ideas in theory. Seeing them in practice is another matter. What we know for sure: The public is warming to immigration The high-quality public opinion data we have shows a pretty dramatic reversal in the public's attitudes toward immigration. That shift is astounding given how aggressively the public was embracing an anti-immigrant attitude during the Biden years. As a refresher: Worsened by record asylum claims and spikes in border crossings, public sentiment moved quickly toward restrictionism and in favor of Trump's campaign proposals. Effective campaigning and sensationalizing by Republicans for most of 2022 and 2023, along with media scrutiny of the effects of immigrant arrivals in major cities, only heightened the public's concerns ahead of the 2024 campaign year. And so, for the past two years, the country seemed primed to tolerate more aggressive enforcement and stricter border policies. Last year marked a kind of watershed in this vibe shift: It was the first time since 2019 that a plurality of Americans labeled immigration as 'the most important problem facing the US,' and the first time since 2005 that a majority of the country wanted less immigration, per Gallup's tracking surveys. Polls were routinely capturing significant openness to mass deportations, ending birthright citizenship, holding undocumented immigrants in large detention centers or encampments, and a range of other policies that seem extreme when judged by how the public felt when Trump first entered politics, centering a similar message. Those attitudes explain why Trump's campaign bet that pledging harsher immigration policies would be a political boon. And they explain why popular support for Trump's handling of immigration remained resilient for the first few months of this presidency, even as his other approval ratings began to slide. But that durability has begun to crack. In Gallup polling, the share of Americans who want to lower rates of immigration has dropped from 55 percent in 2024 — the highest level in two decades — to 30 percent this year. Meanwhile, the share who want rates of immigration to stay the same or increase has sharply risen, across all cohorts, including Republicans. And more generally, after a steady increase over the Biden presidency in the share of Americans who say immigration is a 'bad thing' for the US, the trend has reversed. A record share of the country now says immigration is a good thing for the country — 79 percent. That figure is even higher than it was back in Trump's first term, when he first tried to crack down on both legal and illegal migration, asylum, and the southern border, and similarly provoked the country into supporting immigration. Gallup's poll, and the Pew Research Center's own surveys, also show some other signs of the public's attitudes straying from the Trumpist position. Support has risen toward pro-immigrant policies. Compared to a year ago, more Americans support legalization proposals for both DREAMers (those undocumented immigrants who were brought to the US as children) and for undocumented immigrants in general. Both proposals now have the support of at least eight in 10 Americans. Conversely, support for more aggressive enforcement policies has declined: Fewer Americans support 'significantly' hiring more Border Patrol agents and 'deporting all immigrants' to their home countries than did a year ago. The Pew survey adds some important context for these shifts: Americans broadly disapprove of Trump's handling of immigration so far, and specifically reject Trump's highest-profile moves. Some 60 percent of Americans oppose Trump's suspension of asylum programs and Temporary Protected Status policies. More than half oppose increasing ICE raids on workplaces and building more holding centers for undocumented immigrants awaiting deportation cases, for which Trump's recent tax cuts and spending law allocates $75 billion in funding. And only 37 percent of Americans back the idea of deporting undocumented immigrants to El Salvador, as epitomized by the controversy over Kilmar Abrego Garcia. As CNN's Aaron Blake pointed out this month, polls over the past few weeks all suggest something similar: Democrats, independents, and even some Republicans are feeling like Trump, and his administration, are going 'too far' in how they're enforcing their policies, particularly deportations. And the overall trend, shown in Gallup, Pew, and in polling averages, is declining approval of Trump's approach so far. What is less clear: How durable this dissatisfaction with Trump will be Still, the data paints a more mixed picture of just how long and steady this openness to immigration will remain. And it's not clear if it will be enough for the public to act against Trump. The Pew survey — which was conducted partially before protests against large-scale ICE raids began in June — shows that there are still some Trump policies with split public support. For example, about half of Americans support 'using state and local law enforcement to aid federal deportation efforts,' assigning more federal employees to work on deportations, and offering financial support to undocumented immigrants who 'self-deport.' Support for deporting undocumented immigrants convicted of violent and nonviolent crimes remains high as well. And at least one core Trump promise is now mainstream: support for extending border wall construction along the US-Mexico border has majority support, seeing increases across partisan lines. This openness to some of Trump's positions demonstrates the complexity of public opinion on immigration. Americans often make more sweeping declarations when asked about the general contours of an immigration policy question. But when provided with details and given more specific conditions and qualifications, they often endorse contradictory opinions, or an 'all-of-the-above' approach. We also don't have enough data at this point to judge just how much immigration policy, and Trump's handling of it, matters to Americans, or if it will push them to punish Trump and his party during elections this year and next. Immigration is also no longer the main concern of most Americans — it's preserving democracy, or the economy, per recent polling from Quinnipiac. And across the surveys we do have, public views seem to be confused about just what the ramifications of Trump's approach will be: Will it cost American taxpayers money? Will it make the economy weaker? Will it lead to less crime and make the country safer? A strong majority opinion has not formed on any of these questions yet.
Vox
6 hours ago
- Politics
- Vox
Democrats are right to flirt with Trump-Epstein conspiracies
is a senior correspondent at Vox. He covers a wide range of political and policy issues with a special focus on questions that internally divide the American left and right. Before coming to Vox in 2024, he wrote a column on politics and economics for New York Magazine. A group of young protesters holds pictures of Jeffrey Epstein and Donald Trump outside federal court in New York City on July 8, 2019. Luiz C. Ribeiro/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images Democrats want you to know that President Donald Trump definitely might be protecting a cabal of child abusers. Or so the party's recent messaging suggests. For years, extremely online conservatives have been agitating for the release of the 'Epstein Files' — a hypothetical trove of confidential documents that reveal the powerful co-conspirators of Jeffrey Epstein, the financier and accused sex trafficker who died in prison in 2019. When Fox News asked Trump last year whether he would release these files upon winning reelection, the Republican said, 'I guess I would.' Upon taking office, the Trump administration hyped the imminent disclosure of these documents. Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested in February that a list of famous people who had abused Epstein's trafficked girls was 'sitting on my desk right now to review.' Around the same time, Bondi and Trump's FBI released what it billed as the 'first phase of declassified Epstein files.' But these proved to be binders comprised largely of already public information. Then, earlier this month, the Justice Department declared that Epstein did not actually maintain a 'client list,' that he had died by suicide (contrary to the popular theory that he'd been murdered to prevent the exposure of his clients), and that no further files on his case would be made public. This incensed much of the online right. And Democrats have decided to echo its outrage. This story was first featured in The Rebuild. Sign up here for more stories on the lessons liberals should take away from their election defeat — and a closer look at where they should go next. From senior correspondent Eric Levitz. The party's decision to dedicate so much energy to promoting this controversy might seem dubious. For one thing, Democrats' ostensible outrage over the alleged suppression of the Epstein Files is obviously hypocritical. After all, he died six years ago. A Democratic administration was in power from January 2021 through January 20 of this year. If there are secret federal documents about this case that incriminate public figures, then Joe Biden had them at his disposal. Thus, by affirming the notion that incriminating 'Epstein Files' exist, Democrats risk perpetuating the idea that both parties are toxically corrupt — a form of cynicism that Trump has long exploited to excuse his shameless graft and malfeasance. Separately, Democrats have already spent much of the past decade trying to tar Trump's image by spotlighting his scandals. Yet the minority of Americans who are open to supporting Trump — but not dead set on doing so — haven't evinced much concern for his character. Generally, messaging that emphasizes how Trump's policies would materially hurt ordinary Americans has tested better than attacks on the demagogue's shady dealings or authoritarianism. Whatever one may say about the White House's handling of the Epstein case, it does not seem likely to increase Americans' cost of living. By focusing on Epstein, Democrats are thus arguably defraying attention from Trump's true vulnerabilities — such as the tariffs that are raising prices for consumers or Medicaid cuts that will take health insurance from lower-income people. But these worries are misguided. The Democrats' decision to lean into the Epstein controversy is a political no-brainer for several reasons. Trump's relationship with Epstein – and handling of his case – is genuinely eyebrow raising To a degree, the furor over Epstein is rooted in beliefs that are unproven, if not outright false. For instance, there is no public evidence that he kept a labeled list of fellow sexual abusers, much less that such a document is in the government's possession. But the Trump administration has genuine liabilities on this subject, which Democratic advocacy can direct public attention toward. First, the incontrovertible facts about Trump's relationship with Epstein are unflattering and eyebrow raising, even though they are not incriminating. In the 1990s, Trump and Epstein were repeatedly photographed and video taped beside each other at social events. This by itself isn't especially damning. There's no reason to presume that everyone who ever associated with Epstein participated in his sex crimes. Criminals do not generally socialize exclusively with their co-conspirators. But in 2017, Epstein told the journalist Michael Wolff that he had been Trump's 'closest friend for 10 years.' And in 2002, Trump told New York magazine, 'I've known Jeff for 15 years. Terrific guy. He's a lot of fun to be with. It is even said that he likes beautiful women as much as I do, and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.' What's more, on Thursday night, the Wall Street Journal published the text of a letter that Trump sent to Epstein to celebrate the latter's 50th birthday. In that missive, Trump wrote his signature below the following lines of imaginary dialogue, which were typewritten: 'Voice Over: There must be more to life than having everything,' the note began. Donald: Yes, there is, but I won't tell you what it is. Jeffrey: Nor will I, since I also know what it is. Donald: We have certain things in common, Jeffrey. Jeffrey: Yes, we do, come to think of it. Donald: Enigmas never age, have you noticed that? Jeffrey: As a matter of fact, it was clear to me the last time I saw you. Trump: A pal is a wonderful thing. Happy Birthday — and may every day be anothedr wonderful secret. It's as though the administration cannot anticipate the most obvious consequences of its own actions, or think a single step ahead. It's possible that Trump did not realize quite how young Epstein's sexual targets were. And it's also conceivable that the playful references to 'age' and a 'secret' in Trump's letter reference something innocuous. But at the very least, these are extraordinarily inconvenient things to have said about — and to — a man who allegedly trafficked 14-year-old girls. To be clear, there is no evidence that Trump participated in Epstein's abuse of children. But his longtime friendship with the rapist, avowed knowledge of Epstein's taste for youth, and own record of alleged sexual misdeeds makes this a politically hazardous subject for Trump. Making matters worse for him, his own claims about the Epstein controversy are wildly contradictory. In recent days, Trump has claimed that the government does possess secret files with explosive claims about Epstein, but that these documents were forged by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, former FBI Director James Comey, ex-CIA Director John Brennan, and 'the Losers and Criminals of the Biden administration.' He has also insisted that this whole controversy is dull and deserves no public attention, telling reporters, 'I don't understand why the Jeffrey Epstein case would be of interest to anybody. It's pretty boring stuff. It's sordid, but it's boring.' As The Atlantic's Jonathan Chait notes, these two claims are a bit hard to square. On the one hand, Trump suggests that the FBI, CIA, State Department, and the Obama and Biden administrations all conspired to fabricate defamatory documents about an alleged child sex abuse conspiracy. On the other hand, he says that this is a really boring story that shouldn't interest anybody. But an elaborate conspiracy involving the highest levels of the US government — and seemingly aimed at politically damaging Trump — seems like something that would quite naturally interest Americans in general, and Trump supporters in particular. What's more, even if we put Trump's conspiracizing to one side, his claim that he doesn't understand why the Epstein case interests people still seems disingenuous. After all Trump, accused former President Bill Clinton of visiting 'the famous island with Jeffrey Epstein' in 2015, and spread allegations that Clinton was behind Epstein's death four years later. Trump subsequently demanded 'a full investigation' into Epstein's death and crimes, telling reporters, 'You have to ask: Did Bill Clinton go to the island? That's the question. If you find that out, you're going to know a lot.' It seems clear then that Trump knows perfectly well why the Epstein case interests people. The fact that he now feels compelled to claim otherwise, while begging his supporters to stop talking about the controversy, seems rather odd — and also, like an indication that Democrats would be wise to keep attention focused on this matter. Meanwhile, it is clear that Bondi and FBI Director Kash Patel deceived the public about the Epstein case — either when they suggested that the government had been suppressing documents about his co-conspirators, or when they later insisted that such documents did not exist. In 2023, Patel suggested that the Biden administration possessed Epstein's 'black book,' and insinuated that this document was not merely a catalog of the financier's contacts, but rather, a list explicitly identifying various famous people as 'pedophiles.' As noted above, Bondi told Fox News that an Epstein client list was sitting on her desk. Now, Patel and Bondi maintain that no such lists exist. This leaves two possibilities: Either America's two top law enforcement officers misled the public about the Epstein case in the past, or they are doing so today. Put more pointedly, Patel and Bondi either cynically promoted conspiracy theories about a Biden administration coverup, despite knowing they lacked evidence for their smears, or they suddenly decided to perpetrate such a coverup themselves. Neither interpretation recommends them for high office. And both readings of their actions make the Trump White House look grossly incompetent. If the administration knew that it had no compelling information about Epstein to unveil — or else, that it possessed explosive information that it didn't wish to make public — why did Bondi spend months hyping the release of the Epstein documents? It's as though the administration cannot anticipate the most obvious consequences of its own actions, or think a single step ahead (a suspicion also raised by Trump's trade strategy). Cuts to Medicaid provider taxes are never going to get more clicks than conspiracy theories about elite child sex abuse rings If the Democratic Party had the power to dictate which topics would trend on social media, then they would be well-advised to pick Trump's Medicaid cuts or tariffs. But they do not have such power. Every Democratic official in the country could spend all day every day talking about Trump's defunding of rural hospitals — posts and podcasts about Medicaid provider taxes still wouldn't outperform content about whether Epstein was a CIA asset. Millions of Americans may vote once every four years on the basis of mundane economic policy concerns. But they are not typically going to entertain themselves by viewing TikToks about the 'de minimis' exemption on a daily basis. Democrats can and should foreground their party's strongest policy arguments in paid media. With a TV or YouTube ad, you can force the public to think about the subject of your choice. But the range of topics that you can get people to post about for free is much narrower. And of all the stories that could plausibly drive weeks of public conversation, Trump purportedly suppressing information about Epstein — to the chagrin of his own allies — seems like one of the most favorable for Democrats. There's a major difference between this scandal and all Trump's prior ones Generally speaking, when you have an opportunity to increase the salience of an issue that divides your opposition, it's wise to do so. But Trump's base was behind him in all of those instances. Today, by contrast, major right-wing influencers are validating the Democratic Party's narrative that a Republican White House is hiding something. And Trump's attempts to shut down discussion of the Epstein case have gotten him 'ratioed' on his own social media platform. Generally speaking, when you have an opportunity to increase the salience of an issue that divides your opposition, it's wise to do so. This is especially true when that issue also pits your adversary against majority opinion. And in trying to persuade the broad electorate that the Trump administration is mishandling the Epstein case — possibly, for nefarious reasons — Democrats are pushing on an open door. A YouGov/Economist poll released this week found that nearly 80 percent of Americans want the government to 'release all the documents it has about the Jeffrey Epstein case,' while more than two-thirds — including half of Republicans — say that the government is 'covering up evidence it has about Epstein.' Internal Democratic polling tells a similar story. A recent survey from Blue Rose Research found that 70 percent of the public — including 61 percent of Trump voters — believes that law enforcement is 'withholding information about powerful people connected to Epstein.' And a majority of voters agreed with the statement, 'authorities are keeping secret' a list of Epstein's clients to 'protect powerful people like Donald Trump.' There's a broader narrative here about Trump betraying his campaign promises, in service of the powerful Finally, it isn't that hard to weave the Epstein controversy into a broader story that touches on voters' material concerns. And Democrats are already doing this. In the party's telling, Trump's refusal to release documents related to the case reflects a core truth about his presidency: his fundamental commitment is to protecting the powerful, even if doing so requires breaking campaign promises. Hence, Trump's willingness to slash Medicaid — after promising for years that he wouldn't — so as to finance tax cuts for the rich. As Pat Dennis, president of the Democratic super PAC American Bridge, told Politico, the Epstein controversy is 'an interesting foot in the door to the overall case' that Trump 'doesn't have your back on Medicare, on health care, on veterans.' Thus, the Epstein story is a clear boon for Democrats, who've been right to increase its salience. Still, Democrats still have a lot of work to do Even as the party savors Trump's squirming, however, it should not lose sight of its own lackluster political standing. As CNN's Harry Enten noted this week, Democrats' poll numbers are far worse today than at this point in the 2006 and 2018 midterm election cycles — years when the party enjoyed large congressional gains amid a Republican presidency. In the generic congressional ballot, Democrats lead Republicans by just 2 points today, compared to seven points in 2006 and 2018. All else equal, the Epstein scandal is a helpful development for Democrats. But its impact so far is miniscule. The online right's freakout notwithstanding, 90 percent of Republicans still approve of Trump in a recent Quinnipiac poll. By contrast, Democrats disapprove of their own congressional leadership by a 13-point margin. Democrats can and should continue cultivating distrust in Trump. But to increase faith in their own party, they will need to do more than affirm voters' conspiratorial suspicions about a long dead sex offender.
Vox
7 hours ago
- Health
- Vox
Your health insurance premiums could soon go up 15 percent — or more
covers health for Vox, guiding readers through the emerging opportunities and challenges in improving our health. He has reported on health policy for more than 10 years, writing for Governing magazine, Talking Points Memo, and STAT before joining Vox in 2017. We just got a preview of the likely consequences of the 'big, beautiful bill' passed by Republicans in Congress and signed by President Donald Trump: Premiums on the Affordable Care Act's health insurance marketplaces are on track to increase 15 percent on average next year — a record-setting pace. This comes from a new analysis of more than 100 health insurers selling plans to individuals on the ACA marketplaces that additionally found that plan premiums increases are twice that in 2025 and the highest single-year increase since 2018. According to the experts from KFF, a health policy think tank, one out of every four plans is raising its rates by 20 percent or more. Peterson-KFF Health System Tracker These rates are preliminary and will be finalized later this summer. Though the new rates were actually filed before the Republican 'big, beautiful bill' passed in Congress earlier this month, KFF experts explain that the GOP's agenda is playing a role in these cost increases — and it may drive prices up even more in the future. Here's what all of this means for you: If you buy insurance on your own through the ACA's marketplaces, your coverage may be a lot more expensive as soon as you sign up for coverage next year. If you're on Medicaid, the GOP's bill creates new work requirements that will take effect next year and could put your benefits at risk. And if you get insurance through your employer, your premiums are going to grow too if other people lose coverage, which is more likely to happen because of all of these changes. Let's break it down. Why all of this is happening, briefly explained As Republicans were pulling together their budget bill, there was the clear question of what to do about enhanced ACA subsidies that have been in place since 2021, first authorized by the Democrats as part of their own budget reconciliation legislation. At the time, the enhanced subsidies both lowered costs for people already eligible for financial aid under the law and extended eligibility for financial assistance for the first time to more middle-class families. Marketplace enrollment nearly doubled from 2021 to 21 million in 2024 as a result. But the enhanced subsidies were only authorized through 2025. Republicans, who had previously criticized the ACA for making health insurance unaffordable for the middle-class people who have now gained coverage through the expanded assistance, opted not to include an extension of the subsidies as part of their tax-and-spending bill. Instead, they chose to allow the subsidies to lapse, while slashing Medicaid spending over the next decade and providing an outsized tax cut for businesses and the wealthy. It is possible that these subsidies could be saved if Democrats and some Republican lawmakers can band together to craft a bipartisan deal to maintain the subsidies later this year, but DC insiders are dubious that one can be struck. If the subsidies do indeed end, they add more pain to the other regulatory changes that are coming to limit financial aid on the marketplaces. These combine to an estimated 5.1 million people who could become uninsured. These consequences will have ripple effects: The people who drop coverage are projected to be healthier, because they are more likely to think they could live without health coverage, which leaves a sicker and costlier pool of patients in the marketplace. Insurers are already pricing that shift in. According to the KFF analysis, health plans are citing the lapsed subsidies to explain the proposed rate increases, with the policy change contributing about 4 percent to the rate hike on average. The threat of tariffs from Trump has been cited for another 3 percent increase by some plans. The rest of the proposed rate hikes are attributed to the continued growth in the prices for medical services, which has been ongoing for decades. And these increases may be only the beginning. The Republican bill's changes to Medicaid don't take effect until the end of 2026, but they could also push premiums higher if millions of people lose coverage as expected. When people lose Medicaid, they are more likely to end up in the emergency room. That requires more costly care than they'd get if they were insured. Those increased costs to hospitals are passed on to insured patients when providers negotiate their payment rates with health insurance plans. Whether patients will blame the GOP for these cost increases remains to be seen. But their wallets are already feeling the effects of the Republican budget bill.
Vox
7 hours ago
- Business
- Vox
Which matters more for the economy — babies or robots?
is a policy correspondent for Vox covering social policy. She focuses on housing, schools, homelessness, child care, and abortion rights, and has been reporting on these issues for more than a decade. Two sweeping visions of the future have been unfolding, each producing grim — yet seemingly contradictory — predictions for the fate of humanity. On the one hand, we're learning that the birth rate is falling all over the world, leading to aging societies and a global population set to decline this century. If trends continue on their present path, demographers warn, there won't be enough people to work to support society. The extreme labor shortages would lead to stagnation, poverty, and ultimately — in the most dire scenarios — the collapse of civilization itself. On the other hand, there are repeated warnings that artificial intelligence could take most, or even all, jobs. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei recently predicted that AI would eliminate 50 percent of entry-level white-collar jobs within the next five years. Though other AI leaders are more skeptical about such sweeping automation, the International Monetary Fund did find that between 2010 and 2021, the US regions that adopted AI most quickly saw larger drops in employment rates, with men and workers in manufacturing and service jobs hit hardest. What happens if we're short on both workers and jobs? Can both be true at once? And if they cancel each other out, does that mean we don't need to worry? Many researchers studying these topics simply do not engage with one another — whether because of disciplinary silos that reward specialization, or timeline mismatches that make collaboration feel irrelevant. Demographers think in decades while technologists think in years, business leaders navigate quarterly earnings, and economists toggle between immediate policy concerns and long-term growth models. The reality is also that researchers are operating under extraordinary uncertainty. We don't know yet whether AI will complement workers or replace them, whether displaced workers will retrain successfully as in past transitions, or how aging populations will drive policy responses. This makes it easier to focus on more narrow predictions than to attempt forecasts that span multiple unknowns. But these conversations are closely intertwined, and, even under uncertainty, there are clues to what we can and can't know. Population growth vs. economic growth About five years ago, Joseph Davis, Vanguard's chief global economist, started fielding questions from investors that he didn't quite know how to answer. With the economy changing in unfamiliar ways — from an aging workforce to booming tech stocks — how should they think about where to put their money? Should they be bracing for long-term inflation? Should they just follow the momentum and buy into tech giants like Amazon and Nvidia? Davis, responsible for guiding Vanguard's 50 million investors, couldn't find anyone systematically studying how tech and population trends might interact — so he decided to do the research himself. The effort resulted in a working paper focused on how demographics, budget deficits, and globalization have shaped the US economy over the last century. 'It was a humbling experience,' Davis, who recently turned that research into a book, told me. Demographics 101 Demographic trends operate on interconnected levels. Population growth—the total change in people—can slow due to declining birth rates, reduced immigration, or both. Meanwhile, population structure refers to the age composition: even if total population stays stable, societies can still 'age' when birth rates fall and people live longer, creating fewer working-age adults relative to retirees. These shifts matter because they determine how many people are available to work, pay taxes, and support social programs. One of his clearest conclusions is that long-run economic progress does not depend primarily on population size. Using a model built on 130 years of economic data, he finds that changes in population growth have almost no meaningful correlation with GDP or inflation. Instead, the biggest gains in living standards have come during periods of major innovation — like the electrification of the 1920s or the rise of personal computing in the 1990s — regardless of population trends. Davis pointed to historical periods — like the Renaissance and the Roaring Twenties — when population growth was actually slowing, yet economic output surged. 'Population growth slowed during the 1920s — we cut immigration by 90 percent. But growth accelerated anyway,' he said. By contrast, eras with strong population growth but weak economic productivity, like the 1970s, produced little real progress. 'Demographics matter,' he told me. 'It's just that it can't be looked at in a vacuum.' The fear that aging societies are destined for decline is widespread — but it's not well supported by the evidence. Davis noted that aging can be linked to increased long-term investment in technology and infrastructure, pointing to countries like Japan and Germany. These nations show that, while shrinking working-age populations can strain public budgets through rising health care and pension costs, and make it harder for businesses to find workers, they don't inherently lead to economic disaster. Dean Spears, the co-author of After the Spike, a new book on population decline, also argues that concerns about aging societies lacking enough workers may be overstated in an era of technological change. 'Aging isn't what we emphasize in our book, because we don't think it's the most important thing,' he told me. 'If AI is able to make output per worker greater…then with fewer workers, you could make up for the fact that there are fewer workers per population.' Spears doesn't think that aging is irrelevant, as fertility rates and the age breakdown of a population shape budgets, taxes, and public services. 'If you're the finance minister,' he said, 'it certainly matters.' But he sees aging as a policy challenge, not an existential threat. The long-term trajectory of a society, he said, will depend far more on productivity, innovation, and how well a society's systems and programs actually work. Neil Thompson, the director of MIT's FutureTech research project, agrees. 'Changes in AI capabilities and what they mean for both the ability to augment productivity of human labor and to fully automate some tasks are happening so much faster and will have so much bigger effects than demographic changes,' he told me. So, will AI make us more productive? The question, then, is whether AI will actually boost productivity enough to offset a shrinking population. Davis, of Vanguard, ran thousands of economic simulations, and the results kept coming back split. While the long-term effects are hard to predict, his simulations point to two futures over the next decade — a 'tug-of-war' between the productivity gains AI could deliver and the fiscal strains posed by aging populations and rising public debt. In the first, which he gives a 45–55 percent probability, AI becomes a 'general-purpose technology' like electricity, driving substantial productivity growth. The confusion surrounding how AI affects productivity extends far beyond academic circles. In the second, with a 30–40 percent chance, AI proves incremental — useful but not transformative enough to counteract rising deficits and an aging workforce. In this scenario, the bleaker forecasts of demographers — that a shrinking number of workers will cripple the economy — are more likely to be true. 'I wish the odds [for growth] were higher,' Davis told me, adding that much of it will depend on other policy choices governments make, especially when it comes to deficits. That same uncertainty is reflected in differing views between two leading economists. Daron Acemoglu, who won the Nobel Prize in 2024, estimates AI will automate only about 5 percent of work tasks profitably over the next decade, producing modest GDP gains. Without active policy intervention, he warns, AI will primarily replace workers rather than augment them. Erik Brynjolfsson, a Stanford Univeresity economist, is more optimistic, believing AI could potentially push annual productivity growth about a full percentage point if it amplifies rather than replaces human work. A growing recognition of uncertainty The confusion surrounding how AI affects productivity extends far beyond academic circles. Anthropic just launched a research program to study AI's economic impact — a tacit admission that even AI developers don't fully understand what they're unleashing. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) also only recently began incorporating AI impacts into its employment projections. In an analysis published in February, the agency takes a deliberately cautious approach, emphasizing that technological change doesn't automatically translate to job losses. Some roles may shrink, particularly those involving highly standardized tasks like insurance claims processing, while others could grow due to new AI-driven demands or the continued need for human oversight. Even experts and advocates deeply versed in related fields acknowledge the limits of current understanding. 'I'm not really a labor economist,' Spears said when I asked about links between AI's economic impact and falling birth rates. Lyman Stone, a demographer and director of the Pronatalism Initiative at the Institute for Family Studies, told me he has not looked specifically into questions of workforce automation and depopulation. Malcolm Collins, a pronatalism advocate and former tech entrepreneur also lacks a clear idea of what these colliding trends might mean. 'It might be that governments can still make the math work just by having lots of people, or it might be that AI really does replace all jobs and it becomes irrelevant how many people exist within a country,' he wrote by email. 'I want to believe that humanity will always have some sort of differential role as an economic actor, but I will be honest that is only hope on my part, and I see no reason why AI would not replace almost all human jobs.' Yet even as AI advances, many of the fastest-growing occupations in America remain distinctly human-centered. The BLS, for example, projects 21 percent growth for home-health and personal-care aides between 2023–'33. McKinsey estimates that AI could automate tasks equivalent to 11 million full-time US jobs by 2030, but surging demand in care work, green technology, and STEM fields still leaves net hiring needs of around 4 million workers. Those fastest-growing jobs, it turns out, are often the hardest for machines to replicate. There's still a lot of separate discussion for now but the conversations won't stay separate forever. Eventually, economic and demographic debates will have to converge.
