Minds, Bodies, and Terawatts

Federal watchdog Monitoring Analytics found AI data centers caused a 76% wholesale electricity price increase in PJM Interconnection, which serves 13 states plus D.C. The capacity auction price rose tenfold in two years to $329/MW-day. Congress has over a dozen bills to force tech companies to pay, Oregon already passed a law, and Google signed the first hyperscaler-funded virtual power plant deal.

Continue the story on unscarcity.ai:

• GPT-4 Training: 50,000 MWh and the AI Energy Crisis
• Fusion Energy 2024-2030: The $10B+ Commercial Race

Full episode notes on unscarcity.ai

A bipartisan coalition of 42 state attorneys general served OpenAI with a sweeping subpoena on June 12, demanding records on advertising practices, user engagement, health data, treatment of minors and seniors, and model sycophancy. The investigation follows Florida suing OpenAI on June 1 over child safety and a Canadian mother's lawsuit alleging ChatGPT encouraged her daughter to self-harm. The subpoena landed 5 days after OpenAI filed confidential IPO paperwork with the SEC.

Continue the story on unscarcity.ai:

• Goodhart's Law: Why AI Metrics Always Backfire
• When AI Goes Public: Shareholders vs. Abundance

Full episode notes on unscarcity.ai

Jeff Bezos's startup Prometheus raised $12 billion at a $41 billion valuation to build AI that automates the design and manufacturing of complex physical systems. The company, with just 150 employees, aims to compress the engineering design cycle by 10x for everything from jet engines to drug compounds.

Continue the story on unscarcity.ai:

• The Substitution Threshold: When You Stop Being the Cheapest Option
• The Solo Unicorn: One Founder, Zero Employees, a Billion-Dollar Question

Full episode notes on unscarcity.ai

New York legislators wrapped up the 2026 session by passing five AI-related bills: a ban on AI companion chatbots for minors (137-0 in Assembly, 60-0 in Senate), an AI Training Data Transparency Act, the FAIR News Act, a data center moratorium on facilities exceeding 20 megawatts, and a ban on AI-driven surveillance pricing. Governor Hochul has until December 31 to sign or veto.

Continue the story on unscarcity.ai:

• AI Governance: Why Hawk-Eye Works But Doesn't Make Rules
• Goodhart's Law: Why AI Metrics Always Backfire

Full episode notes on unscarcity.ai

On June 12, 2026, Anthropic received a US export-control directive citing national security authorities and ordering it to suspend access to its two most capable models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, for any foreign national. Because it cannot filter foreign users in real time, Anthropic disabled both models for every customer. The government cited a jailbreak method; Anthropic says the demonstration only surfaced a few previously known minor vulnerabilities and disputes that a narrow jailbreak justifies recalling a model used by hundreds of millions.

Continue the story on unscarcity.ai:

• Anthropic Pulled the AI Alarm. Who Can Act on It?
• How Emergency Powers Kill Democracies (And How to Stop It)

Full episode notes on unscarcity.ai

Within 48 hours, the two most powerful figures in AI both endorsed direct government payments as the answer to AI unemployment. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published a policy essay June 10 warning that mass job displacement may be 'intrinsic' to AI and proposing universal capital accounts, while Elon Musk — on the eve of his record $75 billion SpaceX IPO — wrote that 'Universal HIGH INCOME via checks issued by the Federal government' is the best way to deal with AI unemployment.

Continue the story on unscarcity.ai:

• Musk Says AI Brings 'Universal High Income.' Here's the Math.
• Why Give Cash When You Can Give Houses? Direct Provision vs UBI

Full episode notes on unscarcity.ai

German robotics pioneer Neura Robotics announced a Series C financing of up to $1.4 billion, the largest ever for a full-stack robotics company. The round brings together Amazon, Nvidia, Qualcomm, Tether, Bosch, Schaeffler, and the European Investment Bank at a $7 billion valuation, signaling cross-sector convergence on physical AI.

Continue the story on unscarcity.ai:

• The Humanoid Robot Revolution: 50,000 Units Shipping in 2026
• AI Layoffs 2025-2030: AI Now #1 Reason for US Job Cuts

Full episode notes on unscarcity.ai

At WWDC on June 8, Apple announced Siri AI, its long-awaited assistant overhaul — a standalone app woven through iOS 27 that draws on users' email and message history. Under the hood it runs on Google's Gemini model, a striking admission that Apple could not build frontier AI in-house. Apple shares reversed lower on the news.

Continue the story on unscarcity.ai:

• Network Effects: Why Facebook Won and Why AI Monopolies Loom
• AI Compute Clusters 2026: The $800B GPU Arms Race

Full episode notes on unscarcity.ai

OpenAI has confidentially filed for an initial public offering, joining Anthropic and SpaceX in what could be the largest listings on record, marking a historic inflection point for AI capital markets and potentially unlocking trillions in public investment into the AI infrastructure stack. The simultaneous IPO filings represent a concentration of AI/tech IPO firepower in a single cycle, with all three companies expected to carry trillion-dollar-plus valuations. This move is seen as a complicated set of tradeoffs, with OpenAI stating that some planned activities are easier as a private company, but the timing of the IPO is uncertain.

Continue the story on unscarcity.ai:

• OpenAI's $122B Round: The Biggest Bet in History
• Iron Law of Oligarchy Explained: Michels to AI (2026)

Full episode notes on unscarcity.ai

AI was cited as the driver behind 40% of US job cuts recorded in May 2026, totaling 97,000 positions eliminated. This marks a significant increase in AI-driven job displacement, with futurist and author Martin Ford warning of a 'white-collar recession' emerging as AI automation moves into knowledge-work roles previously considered safe.

Continue the story on unscarcity.ai:

• AI Layoffs 2025-2030: AI Now #1 Reason for US Job Cuts
• 4.3% US Unemployment, 408 Million Jobs Gap: 2026 Data

Full episode notes on unscarcity.ai