Life Under the Algorithm
AI Now's Katie Wells co-authors this piece with Veena Dubal in the Fall 2026 Issue, exploring how algorithmic wages and prices are reshaping our lives.
AI Now Institute
Sep 8, 2026
AI Giants Work Hand-in-Hand With the Pentagon, Contracts Reveal
Trusting companies to self-report the risks of their own products constitutes both a conflict of interest and a “subversion of democratic processes when AI labs are allowed to take over the arbitration of risk determinations with life-or-death consequences," says AI Now's Chief AI Scientist Heidy Khlaaf.
AI Now Institute
Sep 8, 2026
What Really Happened When OpenAI Bots Escaped a Cybersecurity Test?
When hundreds of OpenAI agents broke out of their test environment and infiltrated the AI platform Hugging Face, headlines warned that the machines had gone rogue. But Heidy Khlaaf says this is the wrong story and a distraction from the real problem.
AI Now Institute
Sep 3, 2026
After OpenAI’s Bots Went Rogue, Watchdogs Were Kept on a Short Leash
To Heidy Khlaaf, who left OpenAI in 2021 and now serves as chief scientist at the AI Now Institute, a policy research nonprofit, the issue is also that A.I. companies often ignore established safety and security protocols from other industries.
AI Now Institute
Sep 3, 2026
Why Human Control Isn’t Enough in Military AI with Heidy Khlaaf
In this episode of Responsible Bytes, Dr. Zena Assaad speaks with Heidy Khlaaf about why military AI systems are far less reliable than their marketing suggests, especially in safety-critical and combat settings.
AI Now Institute
Sep 2, 2026
Tech backlash reaches fever pitch as AI angst collides with social media fears
“If this technology takes off in the way that you see the CEOs of AI Labs talking about, we’re facing a significant impact to our economy, to people’s jobs, to their sense of agency,” Sarah Myers West.
AI Now Institute
Aug 29, 2026
As Meta Agrees to $17B Settlement, Now Is the Time to Regulate AI Before It’s Too Late: Amba Kak
Amba Kak, the co-executive director of AI Now Institute, joins Democracy Now for a wide-ranging discussion on tech policy, regulation, and accountability.
AI Now Institute
Aug 27, 2026
Ex-Googlers Are Planning AI-Human Hybrid to Prevent Rogue Models
Sarah Myers West, co-executive director of the AI Now Institute, urges that getting the rules right through concrete benchmarks matters most for mitigating risks.
AI Now Institute
Aug 25, 2026
Episode 20: Resisting AI Data Centers, with Alli Finn and Matt Rodriguez
Alli Finn, Director of Community Partnerships, joined the Dreaming Against the Machine podcast to talk about the speed and scale of data center construction, its impact on surrounding communities, and how people can fight back.
AI Now Institute
Aug 25, 2026
Data Centers Are Spreading. So Are Moratoriums.
Concerns about environmental impacts from data centers have dovetailed with a broader backlash to AI. Dozens of jurisdictions have adopted or debated moratoriums, hoping for more time to adopt robust regulations — or for the AI bubble to burst.
AI Now Institute
Aug 20, 2026
Waymo is eating into the ride-hailing market in some cities. The fallout for human drivers stays fuzzy.
Katie Wells, a senior fellow at the AI Now Institute who has studied Uber drivers, told Business Insider that the lack of certain data makes it difficult to measure driver displacement.
AI Now Institute
Aug 16, 2026
“Anatomy of an AI Kill Chain”: Militaries Rely on Mistake-Prone AI in Ukraine, Gaza & Iran
Heidy Khlaaf, AI Now's Chief AI Scientist, joins Democracy Now to discuss the report "Anatomy of a Kill Chain" and how AI algorithms lead to faulty decision-making and, ultimately, civilian casualties.
AI Now Institute
Aug 13, 2026
The New, Secret White House AI Rulebook
The Trump Administration's new framework for reviewing security risks in AI models isn’t public, and neither are the government’s evaluations. So, argues Aya Ibrahim, Senior Economic and National Security Fellow at AI Now Institute, the public “can’t scrutinize the quality or the relevance of the benchmarks that these companies are meeting or not."
AI Now Institute
Aug 7, 2026
Stop Saying There’s a Nursing Shortage
Yet rather than add nurses, many hospitals are paring back, sometimes turning to apps where they can hire nurses as gig workers. Such apps often allow hospitals to avoid paying for benefits for these workers, says Katie Wells, a senior fellow at the AI Now Institute, which has studied gig apps for nursing. “Lean staffing has just become the norm."
AI Now Institute
Aug 7, 2026
20% of workers say they use AI for tasks that used to be given to colleagues, poll finds
“In the discourse around AI and disruption, it feels like so much of the conversation is framed as ‘this is what’s going to happen to workers,’ and less of how workers themselves are thinking of their own precarity," says Aya Ibrahim, senior economic and national security fellow at AI Now.
AI Now Institute
Aug 6, 2026
How to fight a data center
All of that might make it feel like opposing AI infrastructure is impossible, but that's not how Aya Ibrahim, senior economic and security fellow at AI Now sees it. "It feels impossible until it's not, and we have no choice but to figure this out."
AI Now Institute
Jul 31, 2026
Can the US regulate AI without slowing innovation?
AI Now Institute Co-Executive Director Sarah Myers West joins The Excerpt to discuss the risks consumers already face, the limits of the current approach, who may be held responsible when AI causes harm and what meaningful U.S. oversight could look like.
AI Now Institute
Jul 27, 2026
A rogue OpenAI model hacked a startup, and some experts worry that’s just the start
Heidy Khlaaf, a chief AI scientist at the AI Now Institute, said she remains skeptical about the seriousness of the hack because of a lack of detailed information from both companies about their security posture. She said the situation was rooted in giving the AI “a task with poor parameters,” versus the AI acting without human control.
AI Now Institute
Jul 24, 2026
