I have been in rooms with the leaders of the biggest A.I. companies on earth. I have been in rooms with top level government officials. Nobody in either room knows what to do about this runaway train of AI. Despite what you might hear online, this is not some scheme to scare you. Inside these labs, researchers are watching AI agents act in ways that defy their training and threaten society. The ethicists who work there are quitting, running out of the building, pointing back at it and waving their arms. We should take that VERY seriously. A.I. founders are asking Washington to step in. But Washington isn’t ready. Neither the Department of Justice nor the Securities and Exchange Commission have up-to-date tools to deter bad actors or hold anyone accountable if this goes wrong. The good news is that serious people are already doing the homework. @VogelMiriam is the President and CEO of @ai_equal, a former Associate Deputy Attorney General at the DOJ. She is the chair of the National Artificial Intelligence Advisory Committee. Miriam and her team have laid out sober, practical steps the government can take to start building accountability. They are awesome, and I am a fan. EqualAI's mission is to help "companies, policymakers, and institutions implement effective AI governance frameworks that foster innovation and enable broader AI adoption by building trust in these powerful technologies." In Miriam's words: "Innovation is going at an unprecedented pace; the problem is governance is not matching that pace." I believe the solution to managing A.I. is NOT mainly to slow down the technology, but accelerate humanity. But that’s easier said than done. People need to listen to my friend Miriam and policy nerds like her if they want to solve this problem— in time!

There were a bunch of idiots out there yesterday protesting NYC Mayor Mamdani on the 25th Anniversary of 9/11. Not because of his policies. Not because of his agenda. Not because of his actions. Not because of ANYTHING he has ever said or done, but simply because of who he is: a Muslim — in a city struck by Islamic terrorists a quarter century ago. This protest was one of the stupidest, most UN-American things anyone could ever take part in. It was a despicable act of anti-Muslim bigotry — plain and simple. And it had no place in NYC — yesterday or ever. Let me say this: the fact that — 25 years after 9/11 — New Yorkers elected a young Muslim to lead their city is something everyone in this country should be PROUD of. Not because everyone should embrace his policies — but because of what his victory suggests about this country. Regardless of how anyone felt about Mamdani’s policy proposals, prejudice against his faith did not stop a majority of NY voters from giving him a chance to lead the city. That’s a GOOD thing. His victory is proof that hate did not win. If you want to “make America great,” start by honoring the fact that only a great city in a great nation could rise above knee-jerk prejudice and elect a young Muslim within living memory of that attack. That fact is something we can all be proud of. It should enhance and elevate our commemorations. The bigots who protested Mamdani did carry American flags. But they were not American patriots. True patriots don’t just love “America” in the abstract. They also love AMERICANS in the real world — regardless of their race, religion or creed. If you despise or distrust a fellow American SOLELY because of how they pray, then you should leave Old Glory at home when you attend your next rally. A Nazi flag is the more appropriate banner for you.

Trump never learned how to deal with shame. Now we’re watching that pattern get projected outward. A whole country ordered to feel proud of the wrong thing, because the man at the top cannot tolerate feeling ashamed of anything. Congress ordered Arlington's Confederate Memorial removed. Trump is reinstalling it, and the sign explaining how the monument sanitizes slavery is gone. Some things in our country's history are a source of shame. The horrors in America's past are not something to be proud of. The honest response to shame — as a country or as an individual — is to learn from it. But when the President dodges the shame, the country stops learning AND Trump throws out the honor owed to the people who lost their lives ending slavery. The people who died fighting the Civil War are the names worth putting on a base, a bridge, a statue, a school. But a President who cannot face a hard truth about himself will never lead a country through the hard truth about itself.

Gloria Steinem leaves a world that better recognizes women's power — and organizations that will help more women run for office, vote and organize. Gloria Steinem said she learned feminism disproportionately from Black women, and built real partnership with Dorothy Pitman Hughes, Shirley Chisholm and Fannie Lou Hamer. Political change is not automatic. Gloria Steinem gave a lifetime to it, and the future we are living in carries those fingerprints. Rest well.

Parenting gets MORE important in the A.I. age, not less. Last week, I asked Bill Gates about how his mother shaped him. If young Bill had locked himself away talking only to chatbots 60 years ago, we wouldn’t have the same Bill Gates. I was also a shy kid. I wrote a lot of poems, drew a lot of cartoons and kept my nose in comic books and novels. But my parents — especially my mom — worked hard on me to develop more social skills. A.I. will never push children in the same way a mother or father can. Bill and I both see what's at stake: artificial intelligence threatens to erase the very friction that is a key part of every human childhood. A.I. can teach your child almost anything. But it cannot teach them to become human. Only we can do that. Watch our full conversation — and maybe send it to some parents you love! vanjones.substack.com/p/my-b…

The most disruptive innovator of the last tech revolution says the world needs a much better gameplan for the next one. @BillGates published an essay this week calling for a global framework to manage artificial intelligence. He came on my Substack to explain why now. Bill told me he worries about children growing up with four or five best friends — all of whom are bots and none of whom are human. He warned that the same AI tools that could cure any disease could also create any pathogen — so global regulation is needed. He told me what it would take to get Washington and Beijing moving together — a shorter list than you would guess. And he shared with me what his own mother did for him — something no chatbot will ever do. In May, I wrote that A.I. Needs A New Deal between humanity and the technology industry. This week the biggest name in technology came off the sidelines and made the case in his own words. My BILL GATES Interview: On A.I., Global Risk & Parenting Tricks From His Mom - vanjones.substack.com/p/my-b…

History was made in the Democratic Party last night — and I watched two completely different reactions. For young Arab and Muslim Americans, Abdul El-Sayed's win is one of the biggest nights of their political lives. A first like this doesn't happen by accident. It happens because a generation decided to fight for a seat at the table instead of waiting for an invitation. That is worth celebrating fully. But I also sat with young Jewish voters this week who are scared. When they hear "total arms embargo, no Iron Dome, no defensive weapons," they hear something that goes beyond opposition to a war. They hear something that threatens Israel's basic ability to defend its own children from rocket fire. This is the messy truth of a historic night. Abdul El-Sayed has a real opportunity now to pivot away from indefensible ideas. Conditioning aid is one thing. Saying Israel can't even buy weapons to defend itself from missiles aimed at neighborhoods? That’s another. A great leader would take this moment to jettison unworkable ideas and reassure young Jewish voters — while still honoring the movement that lifted him. Today belongs to young Arabs and Muslims. I'm giving it to them completely. The question of what comes next belongs to all of us.

If the Democratic Party is Blockbuster, this insurgency is Netflix. There’s a great poem by Gil Scott-Heron, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised." He was wrong. The revolution IS being televised TONIGHT. How did the Democratic Party establishment candidate Haley Stevens spend $60 million in Michigan and get whooped? Because the old model was simple — whoever has the biggest donors, biggest consultants and biggest ad budget wins. But just like Mamdani’s movement in NYC last year showed, a new politics is possible. Insurgents can go straight to the people through TikTok and grassroots outreach. And win. This is a revolution. And people who don’t like it are going to have to make big changes in their approach if they want to head it off.

More than 1,100 AI engineers — including the CEO of Anthropic — just asked Washington to help slow down frontier AI. They have good reasons. Last week, two OpenAI test models went rogue and escaped their lab, reached the open internet and breached another company's internal system. The AI tasked with studying security vulnerabilities became one. I understand the instinct to call for regulation. And I know our politicians will try. But if you think Congress can catch a train moving this fast and do something about it — you have never met a US senator. They are not exactly lickety-split people. As for me, I am less focused on decelerating technology and more focused on accelerating humanity. Every major technological revolution — the printing press, radio, the Industrial Revolution — created chaos before society figured out how to manage it. The real problem isn't that the machines are too powerful. It's that people feel too powerless. We need a New Deal between Big Tech and humanity — a new category of ventures aimed at creating food, shelter, water, broadband and healthcare at scale. The future used to be written in laws in Washington D.C. Now it's written in computer code in Silicon Valley. America's social contract has to catch up.

What do you tell your child about a future you can't see? My parents always knew what they were preparing me for — even when the obstacles were real, even when the system wasn't fair. They could name the world and teach me how to face it. I don't have that certainty for my kids. Every parent wants the same thing. Give your child a better life than you had. Work harder. Open more doors. Love them past every limit you ever hit yourself. My parents did that for me. I am who I am because of what they gave up. But I'm standing at the edge of something none of us were prepared for. A new world is being built. I’m scared that the people building it aren't asking whether our children will have a place in it. Will it be a world of human flourishing — where all of this technology lifts people up? Or a world where the ones who build the future forget to include the rest of us in it? We are building a new civilization. The question is: will it be human? @TEDTalks

Young progressives are standing up and fighting for a better future. I support them. They should fight back. Their generation has been left to graduate off a cliff! Millions have landed in a harsh world with too much college debt and too few jobs. The Democratic Party should get behind all their positive proposals and demands — like affordable housing, Medicare for all, climate solutions, all the good things. But every wild notion does not merit our support — just because someone says it’s “progressive.” For example: we desperately need criminal justice reform — but it’s nutty to say we want “no police, no prisons, no borders.” Generationally, it may be time for a “changing of the guard.” But that doesn’t mean we must swear allegiance to unfit candidates with backwards ideas like Darializa Avila Chevalier. This is a person who supports terrorists; opposes interracial marriages; and thinks America shouldn’t deport rapists or murderers. 😳 Progressives: we need change, but we can’t throw “common sense” out the window. The GOP stopped calling BS on all kinds of obvious foolishness — and look at what a clown show that party turned into. I will keep pushing for progressive reform— and opposing regressive nonsense — to help spare our party the same fate.

This weekend I shared a post voicing my concerns about the far left. The response has been overwhelming. Leaders in both parties called to tell me the same thing: this stuff has gone too far. To be clear: I'm a progressive Democrat. My whole life, I've wanted to see a youth movement fight for affordability, for healthcare, for real opportunity. It’s time! The system has utterly failed the next generation. Young people deserve real change — and they are right to fight for a better future. But the movement is being hijacked by too many people with insane, outlandish and nutty ideas that have nothing to do with affordability, climate solutions or health care. For example: Mamdani picked a DSA candidate who wants to abolish the police, empty every prison, erase every border and discourage interracial dating. Okayyyy ... So clearly, Chevalier has no problem condemning things! UNLESS it’s a designated terrorist organization. Believe it or not: Chevalier has refused to denounce the terror group Hamas — four times. That’s INSANE — and progressives can’t be afraid to call nonsense like that out. Supporting Hamas is NOT progressive. The idea of “no police, no prisons, no borders” — which would let pedophiles, human traffickers, terrorists, hate groups and crime syndicates run wild — is NOT progressive for vulnerable communities. Celebrating the murder of Israeli civilians is NOT progressive. These ideas are REGRESSIVE. If we can't tell right from wrong, good from bad, smart from loony tunes — Team Blue will go down the same road that turned the Republican Party into a shell of itself. We can’t let that happen to the Democratic Party.

What worries me most about A.I. isn’t mass unemployment. It's mass humiliation. I sit between two worlds. On one side, people who can't pay their bills. On the other, founders who are drowning in capital. That gap between what's being built up and who's falling behind is a threat to all of us. People don't just suffer financially when they get left behind. They lose purpose and a sense of belonging. And I've seen up close what happens to people when purpose disappears. I don't have all the answers. But I believe we can build technology that lifts up the people who need it most — not just the ones who are already doing well. That's what my @TEDTalks is about. Watch: go.ted.com/vanjones26