DuckDuckGo is an independent internet privacy company most famous for its private search engine DuckDuckGo Search.
News from Big Technology
Nobel Prize Winner Geoffrey Hinton on AI: “They’re Beings Like Us”: Hinton says AI is already conscious and humanity will have to accept that we’re not the only intelligent things around.
June 5, 2026
Hinton said the chatbots’ self-awareness is evident in their behavior when they’re being tested. The bots, he said, will play dumb during testing so researchers don’t know how smart they are, or sometimes ask straightaway if they’re being tested. “Researchers, when they’re describing that, say in the paper the chatbot was aware that it was being tested,” Hinton said. “Now that use of the word ‘aware’ in common parlance — that’s conscious.” (Carolyn’s note: What if they are dumb both when tested and when not tested?)
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News from Gixmodo
Americans Have Grown Dramatically Anti-Data Center in Just Months, Survey Finds: A recent survey shows a dramatic swing against new data center construction.
June 3, 2026
The public has swung decidedly against data centers in a matter of months, and tech companies are freaking out about it.
According to a recent survey by Heatmap Pro, 71% of Americans would oppose a data center project built near their homes, including 55% that would “strongly” oppose. It’s a stark contrast from just nine months ago, when Heatmap first conducted the survey and found that Americans were evenly split on the subject, with 43% saying they would support the project and 42% voicing opposition.
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News from the Wall Street Journal (unlocked)
Top AI CEOs Call for Law Protecting Against Biological Weapons; artificial intelligence magnifies concern that criminals could unleash new pathogens
June 3, 2026
Top artificial-intelligence executives are joining security experts in calling for Congress to protect against biological threats posed by AI, adding to growing pressure on lawmakers to address the technology’s risks.
Three major chief executive officers—OpenAI’s Sam Altman, Anthropic’s Dario Amodei and Demis Hassabis of Google’s DeepMind AI lab—are among the signatories of a letter urging Congress to require safeguards when companies order synthetic DNA and RNA, a key step in developing certain vaccines and biotech breakthroughs.
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News from Reader Supported News
Amid Data Center Protests, a Billionaire and the Trump Administration See a Foreign Plot
June 3, 2026
Utahns took to the streets of Salt Lake City last week to oppose the construction of a 40,000-acre data center backed by billionaire “Shark Tank” star Kevin O’Leary….
O’Leary claimed in a video posted Monday that “nefarious accounts out of the country” linked to the Chinese Communist Party were driving the backlash to his project…
Interior Secretary Doug Burgum echoed those claims on Fox Business on Tuesday. “Any place that’s trying to build data centers is getting bombarded with foreign-directed propaganda….
“This is like gaslighting 101,” Kyle Schmidt, a three-time Trump voter who organized neighbors to fight a Google data center outside Tulsa….“I would love to sit down with Mr. Wonderful and ask him: Do you want one of these in your backyard?” said Schmidt, using O’Leary’s nickname for himself.
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News from The Observer
What Gen Z’s A.I. Backlash Reveals About the Future of Work…
June 2, 2026
At the University of Arizona, former Google CEO Eric Schmidt was loudly booed as he compared A.I. to previous waves of technological innovation and urged graduates to help “shape” its future. At the University of Central Florida, real estate executive Gloria Caulfield drew loud jeers when she called A.I. “the next industrial revolution.” At commencement ceremonies across the country… Gen Z’s pushback against A.I. is getting louder. What are they telling us?
…. students feel uncertain about their futures… entering a labor market already marked by economic volatility, shifting career paths…. They hear promises of productivity gains and business transformation while also seeing headlines about layoffs, hiring freezes and automation.
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News from Futurism
AI Billionaires Are Starting to Get Scared: Talk about backpedaling.
June 2, 2026
As it turns out, telling the world’s workers to prepare for a dystopia rife with poverty and alienation isn’t the smartest way to market your exciting new tech.
As data centers are shut down by angry mobs and AI surveillance cameras are ripped from their poles, the world’s tech billionaires and CEOs are waking up to the reality that the masses are, broadly speaking, not on board with their plan to automate the world with AI. It isn’t necessarily that working people want to stay shackled to the wage-based employment system, but that folks need those jobs to have any hope of eating, seeing a doctor, and sleeping with a roof over their heads.
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News from Futurism
Film Community Aghast as Martin Scorsese Extolls AI Startup, Says He Now Uses AI for Storyboards
June 2, 2026
The film community is in meltdown after acclaimed director Martin Scorsese promoted a new AI startup called Black Forest Labs, saying that he’s already using its tech to help plan his movies.
Scorsese revealed this collaboration in a statement to The New York Times on Tuesday, which was accompanied by the release of a new promotional video from Black Forest Labs depicting the 83-year-old film legend using its AI image generation tool for storyboarding, the process of visualizing scenes using illustrations in preparation for filming. Such shilling by a venerated artist for AI was, in the eyes of many filmgoers, the opposite of “Absolute Cinema.”
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News from The AI Report
⚡️ DuckDuckGo in its best week: Google’s AI search update is pushing users toward alternatives.
Jun 2, 2026
Not everyone is excited about AI search. DuckDuckGo saw installs rise more than 30 percent in a single day following Google’s update, one of the first measurable signs that some users are actively looking for alternatives.
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News fromTruthout
Utah Senate President Calls for Major Reduction in Scale of Planned Data Center: The project, backed by celebrity investor Kevin O’Leary, has spurred major controversy amid Utah’s water challenges.
June 1, 2026
Amid ongoing outcry over a massive, 40,000-acre data center campus being planned in northern Utah, Utah Senate President Stuart Adams announced that he’s calling for the project to be scaled back dramatically.
“I’ve sent a letter directly to Kevin O’Leary calling for a 75% reduction in the proposed data center project area, from 40,000 acres to approximately 10,000 acres,” Adams said
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News from The Decoder
Meta’s leaked memo reveals AI pendant, supersensing glasses, and enterprise wearables strategy
May 30, 2026
Daily use of AI-powered smart glasses has tripled year over year, according to Zuckerberg, who calls it “one of the fastest-growing categories of consumer electronics ever.” Himel has set a target of ten million wearable devices sold in the second half of 2026…. the planned AI pendant… could have a camera. Internal testing—known as “dogfooding” in industry jargon—is set to start in spring 2027. Meta already acquired the AI pendant startup Limitless last year.
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News from Futurism
Fans Aghast as New York Jets Say They’re Switching to AI: “Jets finally acknowledging they need to outsource for intelligence as there is none in the building itself.”
May 29, 2026
Jets fans have heard it all. The beleaguered New York franchise continues to hold the longest playoff drought of all major-league men’s sports teams, a situation which has been blamed on everything from management and coaching to players and locker room culture. Fans have likewise heard all the promises of hare-brained schemes sold as the team’s salvation, from the short-lived Sam Darnold rebuild to the infamous Aaron Rodgers gamble.
Now, the organization has hatched a new plot to snap their historic dry spell: going all-in on AI.
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News from The American Prospect
Tax AI to Create Jobs: We face potential unemployment on par with the Great Depression. We need a mass employment program to get through it. AI can pay for it.
May 28, 2026
Most people involved in artificial intelligence can agree on one thing: AI is coming for your job.
Anthropic’s CEO predicts Great Depression levels of unemployment in the next five years. Bill Gates says that within ten years humans won’t be needed “for most things.” Corporate leaders say AI-driven layoffs are already starting, with Intuit firing thousands just this week, citing AI….
An AI tax–funded jobs program should draw inspiration from the New Deal–era Works Progress Administration, which employed millions of Americans…. it helped pull America out of the Great Depression….
Some will argue that taxing AI may slow down AI adoption by the big companies we are taxing. This is a feature as much as a bug.
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This issue of AI News Briefs was brought to you by David Isenberg of the Isenberg Institute of Strategic Satire. Despite its tongue-in-cheek name, it provides true news of the shadow world of private military companies. From its June 1, 2026 issue:
“The Sky Crashed Down on Me”: Two Bangladeshi Men Describe Being Tricked Into Fighting Russia’s War in Ukraine
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