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Will AI destroy humanity?

In the "Terminator" movie series, the artificial-intelligence system known as Skynet is given control of the nation's nuclear weapons and uses it to try to destroy humanity. One reason that apocalyptic scenarios involving AI are implausible is that, having seen how that particular movie ends, we are unlikely to be foolish enough to give AI custody of the most destructive weapons on the planet. The unthinkable is nonetheless a hot topic of conversation, given that a researcher at Anthropic just resigned and issued a doomsday warning. According to Jacob Coxon, the rush to develop ...

OMA gets its chance to help manufacturers

It is no small feat to reportedly mismanage something so terribly that the federal government steps in and says you’re done. But that’s what happened last year with Ohio’s Manufacturing Extension Partnership Center, for which the Office of Inspector General says the Ohio Department of Development failed to report accurate financial results and ensure subrecipient expenses were allowable. Now, the National Institute of Standards and Technology says it trusts the Ohio Manufacturer’s Association Educational and Industrial Development Institute to handle the job. OMA says it will ...

Trump continues murderous assault on Washington landmarks

WASHINGTON — First came the murder of the Kennedy Rose Garden. That was just a prelude for the killer in the Oval Office. His next victim is likely the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, the arts heartbeat of the capital and the nation. Symphony, opera, theater and ballet lovers are aghast since President Donald J. Trump shut the building in July, stripped the art and declared it would go bankrupt if his name wasn’t on the wall. On a Sunday walk, I ambled along what was once the Reflecting Pool. Now it’s a mangled mess behind a chain-link fence. As you know, the ...

State report cards show growth, path forward for our schools

Students, teachers, staff, parents and taxpayers throughout the Mahoning Valley and Ohio have reason to smile over this week’s release of the humongous batch of 2025-26 Ohio School Report Cards. Collectively, they document a large majority of our public school systems making the grade. Statewide, grades for English language arts skills have reached a five-year high of 62% proficiency. “Every subgroup that we have made progress over this last year in literacy,” Ohio Department of Education and Workforce Director Steve Dackin touted Tuesday. Likewise, math proficiency among ...

Unleash artificial intelligence

Cell phones made my life easier. So did the internet. Artificial intelligence may enrich it even more. But lots of people are worried. “Stop AI or we’re all going to die!” shout protesters. It’s possible that AI will decide that we humans are in the way and imprison us or kill us. Not likely, say AI specialists, but possible. Anthropic’s CEO just warned that AI is advancing faster than our ability to control it. He and other AI executives say they want to slow it down. He proposes embedding independent “evaluators” inside his company to assess risks. He also ...

The war in Ukraine is becoming very inconvenient for Trump

One of the challenges with writing about the war in — and on — Ukraine is that so little changes. What I mean about so little changing are the moral considerations. Ukraine is the victim of a lawless, brutal, unprovoked invasion by a politically backward and dysfunctional would-be empire ruled by a murderous autocrat. That assessment was obvious on Feb. 24, 2022 when the full-scale invasion was launched, and it was obvious in 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea. The challenge of writing about the war is that once you’ve said that, saying it again just feels repetitive. The longer ...