Monday morning news drop
Google engineer put on leave after saying AI chatbot has become sentient Blake Lemoine says system has perception of, and ability to express thoughts and feelings equivalent to a human child (Guardian)
The bad vibes economy Is the economy actually bad, or does everyone just feel like it is? This sense of dread is so pervasive that it might surprise you to hear that many aspects of the US economy are generally in good shape right now. The unemployment rate is low, and the labor market is strong. Job openings are at near-record levels, and many workers who want to find something better are doing so. (Vox)
What Bosses Lost in the Fight Against Empty Offices: Leverage Employer plans have played out like a game of chicken. Now workers are rebelling outright, and executives are trying everything to make the office worth it. (New York Times)
The Shark is on the attack again: With decades of resentment and an appetite for combat, ‘The Shark’ is throwing golf into chaos again. This time, he’s doing it with Saudi money. (Washington Post)
The Greatest Privilege We Never Talk About: Beauty The benefits of being attractive are exorbitant. Beauty might be the single greatest physical advantage you can have in life*. And yet compared to other other privileges that may arise from race, gender, or sexuality, we don’t talk much about it. (Medium)
A Billion-Dollar Crypto Gaming Startup Promised Riches and Delivered Disaster: Axie Infinity’s vision of a “play-to-earn” video game has crumbled, and the company behind it now tells the players who bought into the hype it was never about the money, anyway. (Businessweek)
Amazon fired Chris Smalls. Now the new union leader is one of its biggest problems. What’s next for the face of America’s new labor movement. (Vox)
As the Great Salt Lake Dries Up, Utah Faces An ‘Environmental Nuclear Bomb’ Climate change and rapid population growth are shrinking the lake, creating a bowl of toxic dust that could poison the air around Salt Lake City. (New York Times)
The EU after Ukraine: With time, the de facto centralization and depoliticization of the Union’s political economy has inserted a hierarchical center-periphery dimension into the Union. The “rule of law” instituted as the rule of an all-powerful court; the formally rule-based but in practice increasingly discretionary economic policy of the politically independent European Central Bank; and the sanction-supported reeducation in European “values” have led the EU to increasingly resemble a liberal empire, in both an economic and cultural sense, the latter as legitimation for the former. (American Affairs)