AI Archives

Robots Gone Wild

Where’s Sarah Connor when you need her? ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

June 26, 2026

Greetings, Meteor readers,

I am obsessed with the story of this man who accidentally impaled himself and then just kept moving. I’m an avid hiker, but if there is so much as a pebble in my shoe, it sends me into a tailspin. Big ups to David and the friends who helped him get to safety.

In today’s newsletter, we are out of the woods and in the heart of the machine with podcast host and tech expert Bridget Todd, who tells us why we should care about an AI model going rogue. Plus, a little mood-boosting.

Smoothing my hiking pole tips,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

Someone call Sarah Connor: Last week, as you’ve probably seen, an AI model created by OpenAI “escaped” its containment parameters and ran loose around the wilds of the internet for four days before it was discovered breaching another AI platform, Hugging Face. Now, if you’re anything like me, you’re probably thinking Girl, what the hell did you even just say? Which was precisely the first question I asked tech expert, author, and “There Are No Girls on the Internet” host Bridget Todd, who was gracious enough to explain why it matters that a robot has gone wild. “People should be alarmed,” she says.

But let’s back up a tiny bit: What exactly happened? The TL;DR as explained by TechCrunch is that an internal model, created by OpenAI and not intended for public use, moved outside of OpenAI without being directly instructed to do so. It is, as far as the experts know, the first hack of its kind. “One point that many observers keep missing is that this wasn’t a rogue agent disobeying orders,” journalist Connie Loizas writes. “It was a system built to hunt for exploits, doing exactly that, just against the wrong target.”

There’s another way in which we all might be missing the point about what happened, notes Todd. Much of the reporting “makes it seem like we're in a Terminator situation where OpenAI’s models are so powerful that they've escaped containment and they're coming for you.” That narrative allows OpenAI “to talk about their technology as if it's something that they don't have complete responsibility over.” But they absolutely do. The escape is a big deal “not because this is some super-scary, malicious sci-fi rogue AI, but because the humans who should be in charge and directing this are making decisions that lead to harmful outcomes,” she says.

WHAT THE HUGGING FACE BOTS HAVE NIGHTMARES ABOUT NOW (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

In explaining this incident, OpenAI has employed the kind of language that places all of the blame on the model itself, as if it made a conscious choice to breach Hugging Face. But Todd says cybersecurity professionals have been warning about this kind of result for years—an AI model being powerful enough to exploit “known security vulnerabilities” in another system.

Amid “all of the decision-making that OpenAI made as a company—how capable a model is, how strong the walls were that they built for it, what the goal that they set for it were, what safety roles they decided to switch off—there was no kind of law directing the duty of care and decision-making,” she says.

So why isn’t there a law? If AI is so powerful and so omnipresent and we already have a mountain of data suggesting that unregulated AI is a danger, why aren’t politicians tripping over themselves to solve the problem before it gets any worse? “The United States really has a lot of anxiety that our country is losing the AI race with China,” says Todd. And the push to win that race, she believes, is taking precedence over common-sense policies. AI companies and government officials are essentially telegraphing: “We don't give a fuck about y'all. Y'all are SOL,” Todd says.

This sprint towards AI supremacy is part of why the technology has felt so inescapable lately. During our conversation, Todd and I swap examples of the often nonsensical commercials and billboards singing the praises of AI. Neither of us can remember the last time an industry tried this hard to ram something down consumers’ throats. “It's almost like this kind of corporate marketing gaslighting speak,” Todd says.

But if a product that is touted to be the greatest thing since the World Wide Web requires this much convincing, is it really all it’s cracked up to be? In the face of sky-high electric bills due to data centers, declining property values, and AI models changing the workforce, the powers that be are still wagering that the average American will just get on board because that’s what they’re being told to do. But “I can tell you that we will not,” Todd says.

The breach of Hugging Face should serve as a wake-up call about the guardrails we need, so we don’t innovate ourselves into oblivion. It’s also a reminder that people are still in control; AI is not an inevitability we must all succumb to. Even the T-1000 was defeated in the end.

AND:

Todd Blanche, Trump’s former personal lawyer and nominee for attorney general, is having a bad week. After Republicans realized they didn’t have enough votes to move Blanche’s nomination forward, the Senate Judiciary Committee postponed the vote, to Trump’s ire. Trump said he was considering pulling Blanche’s nomination, and then doing it all over again next year when these two pesky naysayers are no longer in the Senate. So why is the GOP turning on someone knighted by their leader? Because Blanche isn’t willing to remove Trump’s IRS-audit protection or formally kill his batshit “anti-weaponization” fund.
Ten years ago this week, Hillary Clinton became the first woman to accept the presidential nomination from a major political party, a milestone that NPR’s Mara Liasson called “the penultimate glass ceiling to be broken.” Progressive women voters were divided as to whether she was the best candidate (millions felt the Bern), but most could not deny the importance of her victory. “Clinton is by no means a perfect candidate,” Jezebel’s Stassa Edwards wrote at the time, “but her nomination is an intervention into a centuries-old narrative about who gets to be a leader and what leadership looks like.”
After her criticism of Israel made her a target of AIPAC in 2024, which caused her to lose her primary, former Congresswoman Cori Bush is running to reclaim her seat. “The fight does not end because I got my feelings hurt,” she told the crowd at a recent meet-and-greet.
Today in romantic origin stories: UNDISTRACTED’s Brittany Packnett Cunningham sat down with Maryland governor Wes Moore, the only Black governor in the country, and his wife, First Lady Dawn Moore. Turns out that Dawn caught Wes’s eye two decades ago by handing him “Politics, Civility, and Morality,” an essay by former Czech Republic president Václav Havel, written just after the fall of the Soviet Union. “I’m like, ‘Yo, who are you?’” he recalled thinking in awe. A longtime political superstar, that’s who.
Alexandra Fasulo was once a beloved homesteading influencer. Now, as Alex Hannaford reports for HEATED, Fasulo has become one of the loudest voices against solar energy and her posts are becoming a “blueprint” for the pro-fossil-fuel crowd.
What the hell is a DEI bike lane???
The (literary) girls are fighting. And the classicists.
Women student athletes have found a way to shrink the earning gap between themselves and players on the men’s side: capitalizing on NIL deals.

MOOD BOOSTER

Every Thursday, one of our editors shares a small thing that’s getting them through. If you’ve got something brightening up your week, reply to this email!

LAKE SOPHIA LOOKING DECEPTIVELY QUIET. (VIA INSTAGRAM)

While solo-parenting this weekend, I impulsively decided to bring my baby and four-year-old to a new attraction in Kingston, NY, where we live. Nestled within Sojourner Truth State Park is a new spring-fed turquoise pool called Lake Sophia, named after one of the abolitionist and suffragist’s daughters. Despite that enticing description, the pool itself was not my mood-booster; the spot has been absolutely overrun since its opening earlier this month. By the time we walked 20 minutes from the overflow parking lot only to discover there were zero shady towel-spots left, I was ready to turn back. But then I saw my daughter’s bestie and her lovely mom and auntie, splashing in the water. They had a canopy tent! Snacks! Extra hands for the baby! And that’s what's getting me through: communal caregiving, which saved my day. Neighborly co-parenting vibes 4eva.

—Nona Willis Aronowitz

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AI's Woman Problem

Plus, a free speech crackdown in Idaho ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌ ‌

February 26, 2025

Greetings, Meteor readers,

This morning I read the devastating news that an asteroid scheduled to hit Earth will not be arriving as planned. So I still have to figure out how to potty-train my kid instead of hoping the asteroid will make potties irrelevant. Bummer!

In today’s newsletter, we take a look at a new and troubling gender gap. Plus, for New Yorkers, a few reasons not to take your ex (governor) back.

Life of the potty,

Shannon Melero

WHAT'S GOING ON

The newest gender gap: New research shows that women in the workplace are using AI tools 25% less than men are, creating what researchers call an “AI gender gap.” The main reasons we’re using it less? Women seem to be more worried about being unethical or accused of cheating, especially because they “face greater penalties in being judged as not having expertise in different fields,” one researcher noted in the paper Global Evidence on Gender Gaps and Generative AI. “They might be worried that someone would think even though they got the answer right, they ‘cheated’ by using ChatGPT.”

The paper explains that a hesitation to engage with AI more could harm women’s career development in the long run (given that AI is expected to be part of almost every workplace). Studies have also shown that most AI already exhibits gender and racial bias, and the only way to combat that is to expose AI to more diverse input, including user prompts. Avoiding use “could result in AI systems that reinforce gender stereotypes and ignore the inequities women face in everything from pay to childcare,” Harvard Business School’s Michael Blanding writes. However, given the ethical and environmental concerns around AI and the fact that these programs threaten to take the jobs of 79% of working women (but only 58% of working men), it’s not wholly irrational to not want to be involved.

REMEMBER WHEN WE ALL THOUGHT THIS IS WHAT AI WOULD BE LIKE IN THE FUTURE? BICENTENNIAL MAN 1999 (VIA IMDB)

But there’s no need to abandon the concept altogether. If talking to ChatGPT—or having Google’s Gemini harass you about rewriting perfectly fine sentences, as it’s doing to me right now—feels like surrendering to The Man’s Internet, then consider bots like Diem or Claude, both of which are ChatGPT adjacent but reportedly designed with women and data privacy in mind. Or learn how to bend AI to your will with an educational platform like Folio. If you’re in South America, try Tainá, an AI assistant built with Indigenous tribes to keep traditional knowledge and Indigenous languages accessible. And not that it matters to the tech bros of the world, but were it not for women, we wouldn’t have the advanced computer systems and algorithms we do now. So just back off, Gemini, I got this.

A “terrifying escalation”: A disturbing incident in Idaho this weekend has gone viral. As in other towns across the country, angry constituents at a town hall in Coeur d'Alene, a deep-red district, turned up to protest issues like Elon Musk’s takeover of the federal government and proposed cuts to Medicaid. But at this particular town hall, Teresa Borrenpohl, a former Democratic candidate for the state legislature, was forcibly removed from the event by private security after loudly criticizing the speakers. Borrenpohl was first threatened with pepper spray, then dragged by her feet and hands by unidentified men as witnesses told them to stop and demanded to know who they were. Borrenpohl was later charged with a misdemeanor battery citation.

The incident was “pretty violent and traumatic,” one witness told the AP. “It was evident that dissent was not being tolerated,” another observed. The emcee of the event, Ed Bejarana, even taunted Borrenpohl from the stage: “That little girl is afraid to leave!” he shouted. “She spoke up, and now she doesn’t want to suffer the consequences.” The charges against Borrenpohl were eventually dismissed when the incident made national headlines, but the incident felt like a “terrifying escalation” of suppressing public dissent, as The New Republic’s Melissa Gira Grant put it. It remains to be seen whether escalations like this will be replicated across the country if and when protest becomes more widespread. But Borrenpohl hasn’t been cowed: “I think that my civil rights were stripped from me in that moment in a really embarrassing way,” she said. “[Do] we live in a country where you speak out of turn and the result is three men assaulting a woman?”

AND:

The Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) took place over the weekend and it was totally and extremely normal.

A NORMAL GUY NORMALLY SWINGING A CHAINSAW AROUND A POLITICAL EVENT. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

Montana Republicans have introduced a new bill that would criminalize anyone who leaves the state to have an abortion after the state’s legal limit. Montana voters recently voted to enshrine the right to abortion until fetal viability, but this law affects people traveling for an abortion after that stage, charging them with (and this is real) trafficking their own fetus. Abortion trafficking laws have been around, but this is the first one targeting adults who travel for their own care, and Montana might seem, on its face, like an odd place to test it out. But Jessica Valenti of Abortion, Every Day has a theory: “By starting in a state where abortion is legal until ‘viability,’ it gives Republicans a certain amount of PR cover,” she writes. “They can pretend this isn’t about restricting women’s right to travel—just about stopping ‘late’ abortion.”
Journalist and beloved host of MSNBC’s The ReidOut Joy Reid aired her final show yesterday, ending a five-year run. Reid’s show was canceled over the weekend, as the broadcaster is consolidating its programming. “Joy Ann Reid (@joyannreid) spoke truth as a Black woman and empowered other Black women to find a mainstream audience for our truths,” Kimberlé Crenshaw wrote on Instagram, then urged people to boycott MSNBC. Other notable changes at the network include the cancellation of José Diaz-Balart Reports, The Katie Phang Show, and Ayman Mohyeldin Reports. MSNBC has said that these changes have to do with ratings and restructuring, but it’s impossible not to notice that all shows being canceled were helmed by Black, Latino, Asian, and Arab journalists. Who is it that DEI initiatives benefit again?
Workers at the National Park Service staged a demonstration at El Capitan in Yosemite on Saturday, hanging a massive inverted American flag off the edge of the summit. Widely known as a symbol of distress, the upside-down flag was meant as pushback against the Trump administration’s mass firing of NPS employees.
Today in an unexpected move, Diana Taurasi, one of the most dominant women in the WNBA announced her retirement. “You can’t tell the story of the WNBA without Diana,” the NBA’s Adam Silver said of the six-time Olympic gold medalist. It’s hard to encompass the impact her 20-year career had on women’s basketball but there is one word on everyone’s lips as Taurasi walks off into the sunset: GOAT.

THERE WILL NEVER BE ANOTHER. (VIA GETTY IMAGES)

Andrew Cuomo is seriously considering a run for mayor of New York. This may seem like good news to anyone following what’s happening with current mayor Eric Adams, but let’s get a refresher on Mr. Cuomo from a person who spent the entire pandemic writing about the Cuomo family (it’s me). As governor, Cuomo was a friend to unions and had some legislative wins, but his star really rose during the pandemic with his daily news conferences, which, delivered in his brusque Newtalian accent, made him America’s governor. That reputation was undone in 2021 when New York AG Letitia James’ investigation into Cuomo found that he had sexually harassed at least 11 women during his time in office (a later DOJ investigation upped the count to 13). Cuomo also wrote a book about guiding New York through the pandemic but was ordered to return his earnings from it after an ethics review concluded he had secured the book deal under false pretenses. So all this to say, there’s a reason our exes are our exes. Don’t take him back, babes.
A report released by several groups tracking the practice of female genital mutilation/cutting (FGM/C) around the world has found that the practice exists in more countries than previously thought. According to the report, in 2020 UNICEF estimated around 200 million women and girls had undergone FGM/C. That number has now increased to 230 million. You can learn more and support groups working to end FGM/C here.

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