The era of antagonistic dating 💔

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Hello and happy first week of fall! Right now, it seems like everyone has AI on the brain (regardless of how they feel about it). It’s definitely on my mind, but only insofar as I want to know how to avoid it as much as possible. 

Now that summer is over and we’re fully immersed in “back to school” season (I have no children and have not attended school for 15 years), I’ve been filling my downtime with lots of great analog pursuits: quilting, reading my latest library book, journaling, cooking rice and beans, organizing. Just a lot of good, old-fashioned IRL pleasures that no software could ever replace for me.

Whatever you’re getting up to this week, I hope it’s making you feel smarter, more connected, and more empowered — and I hope this collection of links does the same! 

—Rachel Wilkerson Miller, senior editor

A sinkhole swallowed Nicolas Cage’s driveway. Yours might be next.

I absolutely loved Sara Herschander’s story about beach erosion and seaside communities, because she looks squarely at the problem (Americans have built a great many things on land we should never have built on, and we are now spending millions and millions of dollars on temporary solutions) and she is clear-eyed about the solution (we need to move the houses, businesses, and highways back, as crazy as that might sound). Come for the infrastructure talk, stay for the laugh-out-loud-funny Nic Cage references. 

Soldiers can refuse to commit war crimes. Can AI?

Did you know that the Pentagon is working with OpenAI to build models that “have minimal refusal rates,” meaning models that rarely tell it no? I didn’t realize this until I read this story, but it’s pretty alarming when you consider that soldiers have a legal duty to refuse orders that are illegal. For example, a soldier knows that you’re allowed to target a combatant, but not a wounded or surrendering combatant. Can an AI reliably tell the difference? And does it matter if it can’t really refuse anyway? These are tricky, scary questions, and Vox’s Kylie Jones spoke to experts who can help us understand some of the serious ethical questions presented by AI’s use in warfare.

AI is already deciding whether or not people receive medical care

Speaking of ethical concerns around AI, health insurance companies are using AI to process medical claims, allegedly making that already awful process even worse. There are currently several class-action lawsuits about how this has led to really bad outcomes, and the plaintiffs’ stories are harrowing. Meanwhile, the Trump administration is introducing even more AI into Medicare, potentially expanding the reach of the problem even further. Dylan Scott reports on why patients and doctors are so outraged about this, and what we can do about it.  

Is it truly important to have a sense of self?

On a much lighter note: I always enjoy reading what columnist Shayla Love has to say, and this week is no exception. In response to a reader who is worried about being a people pleaser and perhaps being too easily influenced by those around them, she writes, “I find the term people pleaser to also be a sneaky euphemism. Do you want to know how this sort of behavior is often discussed in the psychological literature? In studies, it’s not always called people pleasing; it’s called lying.” Yow! It’s a completely different way of thinking about the urge to go along to get along, and one that will definitely stick with me. 

It’s not your imagination — dating has gotten way more combative lately

Life as a whole has gotten a lot more tense and polarizing lately, and this week, Allie Volpe looked into how it’s playing out in what should be romantic settings. A lot of people are displaying an openly antagonistic, suspicious mindset on dates — everyone else is lovebombing, gaslighting, toxic, etc. — and all the negativity is a big turn-off. Allie explains how this shift happened, and what singles can do to help turn it around.

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