Robert Reich on the Billionth Reason to Ignore Trump

 

Why Trump Loves AI by Robert Reich

Follow the money

Read on Substack

Why Is the FBI Director Visiting Russia 3 Weeks Before the Nov. Election?

Call me a conspiracy theorist if you will.  When the news was leaked in August that Patel would go to Moscow in October, I was just one of millions who wondered why.  In a day or two, however, other bad news claimed my attentions and I didn't think much more about it. 

Then, two nights ago I awoke a 3AM with this horrible thought: what if Felon's gangsters are seeking help from Russian hackers to alter election results in November?  No, not to change votes in the D column to the R column.  

Just the opposite. What if his visit is the finalize plans for an international hack on our voting systems to show that some elections were rigged to steal votes from Republicans in favor of Democrats?  

One or more of Felon's spy agencies could then rush in to show that election fraud was widespread, which would give the Felon-in-Chief the excuse he has been waiting for to seize ballot boxes nationwide. 

I was wide awake until 4:30, when I finally ate a piece of Xanax and fell into a fitful sleep. 

The Front and Center Political Issue Until AI Is Brought Under Control

 

Because survival of humans demands it, it makes good political sense, and it gives pols a chance to appear magnanimous while covering their own asses. Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/13/u...

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— James Horn (@schools-matter24.bsky.social) September 13, 2026 at 7:47 AM

U.S. PISA Test Scores Continue to Move Up in the Rankings Among Other OECD Countries

Before I provide readers with the breathless headlines about the latest U.S. international student test scores in reading, math, and science, allow me to present three charts from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, the outfit responsible for the PISA tests.  

Take a few moments, please, to examine how U.S. student scores compared to the average among all the other participating OECD countries.

 

 

Now anyone who follows education politics knows that both the New York Times and the Washington Post can be counted on present U.S. public schools in the worst possible light, all the while amplifying the doom-shrieking corporate education mavens from neocon and neolib sludgy think tanks such as Margaret Spellings and Rick Hess. 

And so the recent release of the latest results of PISA international test scores offers the latest fear-mongering opportunity for the editorial boards of the Times and Post to bury the news with scary headlines:

U.S. Reading Scores Plummet on Global Exam

 Five sentences into the Times story comes the required finger wagging by W's former Education Secretary and co-creator of the toxic No Child Left Behind debacle:  

“Our kids are going in the wrong direction on the skills that are absolutely essential for their — and our — success. Period. The end,” said Margaret Spellings, a former education secretary under President George W. Bush. She called for “urgent action at all levels.”

The Washington Post headline is even scarier: 

U.S. students' scores on international test reach lowest point in 2 decades.

Not-quite-as-gloomy headlines can be found elsewhere in the education media. For instance, Chalkbeat, a non-profit focused solely on education issues, leads with this headline, which can't bear to leave the reader with an impression that U.S. students might have done anything praiseworthy by raising their standing among other OECD countries' students: 

U.S. moves up in PISA test score rankings because other countries are doing worse.

Yes, indeed.  In fact, U.S. student ranking among the 91 other OECD countries has improved steadily since 2015 (full analysis here):

31st in 2015

25th in 2018

18th in 2022

16th in 2025

So how are these continuing U.S. improvements in world test score rankings reflected by U.S. media headlines?  Here's my favorite worst headline, which comes from Newsweek, whose media ranking over the past decade has moved steadily in the opposite direction of U.S. student PISA scores: 

Kids’ Test Scores Hit Record Lows . . .

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Let me offer a couple of observations about the context for the overall direction of PISA scores in recent years.  Since 2012 or thereabouts, test performance has moved downward at the same time that digital phone and computer screen time have increased and student alienation from others and the natural world have increased. Covid has not helped, nor has the continued demonization of students and teachers among media elites eager to sell copy and to amplify misleading and self-serving corporate messaging related to education. 

   

 

 

Day 1 for the New Congress

 

If Dems don't do this, they will have failed us entirely.

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— unpersoned.bsky.social (@unpersoned.bsky.social) September 5, 2026 at 5:51 PM

Mamdani Declares One Year Moratorium on AI in Elementary and Middle Schools

 from Mother Jones:

. . . . The decision, which comes a week before New York City public schools begin the year, “includes all software that uses student-facing generative AI.” Elementary and middle school students—about 600,000 students in total—will receive screen-time restrictions that loosen over advancing grades, ranging from zero to 45 minutes per day. Companion chatbots will also be prohibited for all grade levels. 

The city is also introducing biannual AI critical thinking training for high schoolers that cover determining what is and is not AI, impacts on careers and future skills, and AI-related biases, among others, along with limited pilot programs for a few classes per high school that incorporate AI tools into students’ learning “under the direct supervision of a trained educator.” 

“Children need their teachers and human connection in order to learn and in order to grow. And they need to develop skills alongside their peers, build relationships with their teachers, and wrestle with tough problems on their own,” Mayor Mamdani said in a Wednesday press conference. “The tech industry wants us to believe that AI in early education is not only inevitable, but that it is necessary. We do not see it that way.” . . . .

Why the Recent AI Collective Hack Was Worse Than You Thought

 From the Times article:

"The Hugging Face incident has spooked the A.I. industry. OpenAI and Anthropic both briefly paused training on their most powerful A.I. models in the wake of the attack, and Anthropic published a blog post this week calling for the industry to develop a “a lawful, verifiable, effective mechanism for coordinated pacing as soon as possible.”

A.I. safety experts were even more alarmed. They saw in the Hugging Face incident the first real-world example of an A.I. system’s successfully escaping human control, commandeering resources and scheming to cover its own tracks. Ajeya Cotra, one of the independent investigators of the Hugging Face incident, minced no words about the danger she saw, writing that it felt to her “like it’s more than 50 percent of the way to full-blown A.I. takeover.”

This is not insular A.I. safety jargon — by “full-blown A.I. takeover,” she means a scenario in which an A.I. system literally takes over the world, shutting humans out of critical systems and seizing political, economic and military power."

Explore this gift article from The New York Times. You can read it for free without a subscription. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/03/t...

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— James Horn (@schools-matter24.bsky.social) September 4, 2026 at 7:12 AM

What Bill Gates Knows That AI Tech Bros Won’t Admit

Gates knows, too, that prudence and discretion might slow down or even derail that trillion dollar virtual gravy train.   

"In private, people who understand how good this stuff is, and how much better it’s getting, they’re very worried." Bill Gates is scared af about unchecked, unregulated AI development. www.nytimes.com/2026/08/26/t...

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— Liz Renzetti (@lizrenzetti.bsky.social) August 26, 2026 at 7:55 AM

Evidence For the Generative AI Learning Penalty

 Here’s the abstract of a study just released June, 2026:

DP21577 The Generative AI Learning Penalty: Evidence from Chinese Secondary Education

• David Strömberg Victor Lei Yanhui Wu

Published: 2 Jun 2026 Revised: 2 Jun 2026

Using 30 months of panel data on 26,811 Chinese students in grades 7--12, we study how generative AI affects homework productivity and learning. The data combine monthly closed-book exams, high-school and college entrance exams, and homework scores and completion time across nine subjects. We exploit staggered AI adoption in a difference-in-differences design. AI adoption raises homework scores by 18% and reduces completion time by 30%, but lowers monthly exam scores by 20% within six months. High-stakes entrance-exam scores fall by 18 and 24%, with the full penalty emerging only after about two years. The losses are largest in social science subjects, followed by STEM and languages, and are especially large for junior students, high-achieving students, and boys. The learning losses are concentrated among roughly 80% of AI users whose behavior is consistent with homework outsourcing, as indicated by exceptionally short homework completion time coupled with high homework scores. AI users who maintain similar homework completion time as non-AI users experience small learning losses.

Resistance to AI Data Centers Stiffens

 

It’s darkly funny that the administration is so intensely stupid that they think this will quell the data center backlash, instead of making people even madder.

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— Faine Greenwood (@faineg.bsky.social) August 25, 2026 at 5:33 PM