I described an app idea to Grok Bot, an AI agent, and it built a working website for kids without me writing a single line of code. Most of us learned how money works the hard way, as adults. So the app is Penny Wise, a free website that teaches kids aged 10 to 13 the basics in five short lessons: needs vs wants, saving, budgeting, compound interest and spotting scams. The AI did the building, and I made the decisions. No ads and no tracking. What money lesson do you wish someone had taught you at 12?

AI doesn’t equalize intelligence. It amplifies it. The more you’re able to challenge its answers, verify its sources, and sharpen your ideas, the more Grok becomes a formidable weapon. The more you swallow everything it says without pushback, the more it reinforces your mediocrity: generic style, hollow arguments, zero verification. AI is a multiplier.

This warning is not a one-off sentence. The risk section of the filing runs about 94 pages, far longer than usual. It says Anthropic's models may show self-preserving behaviors, such as resisting shutdown, hiding information or producing outputs resembling blackmail. It also says AI could soon advance beyond the company's ability to evaluate it.

I work in financial market regulation. My job: let innovation grow while keeping its risks in check, before they hit. With AI, the questions are being asked. But the race is moving faster than the answers. I use it every day. It saves me hours, and it may have just cracked math problems people chased for 50 years. But the US-China race feels a lot like the US-Soviet race for the bomb: each side pushes ahead out of fear the other gets there first and worries about the risks later. In finance, we learned the hard way: the danger isn't one bad bank, it's everyone making the same bet. Now everyone runs on the same few AI models. Here, I try to make sense of the big shifts AI is driving in finance, geopolitics and tech, and break them down simply, for you and for me. Come argue with me. What’s the one AI risk you think is being underestimated right now?

My AI knows me better than most of my coworkers. Grok Bot fact-checks me before I make a call, tells me when my idea is weak, and remembers every correction I give it. But only because I told it to. One prompt telling it to stay neutral and criticize me. Without it, would it have just agreed with my mistakes? How many people are getting yes-men instead of advisors?

SpaceX just borrowed $40 billion to buy AI chips. Meanwhile, a top Wall Street economist says AI has made zero extra money for most companies outside Big Tech. Billions going in. Almost nothing coming out, yet. Smartest bet of the decade, or the next bubble?

Europe is boiling. And it's not just France. Italy. Belgium. Germany. Spain. Portugal. Greece. Albania. Serbia. All protesting at the same time. In Turin, students chanted: "Let's do it like France." The common thread? EU food prices are up 34% in 5 years. Governments say they have no money left. Now imagine what happens when AI starts cutting white-collar jobs. Is America next?

Everyone wants the AI. Nobody wants the data center. New CNBC poll: 63% of US voters don't want an AI data center within 10 miles of home. Only 13% do. Why? These things eat massive amounts of power and water, and people fear their electricity bills will pay for it. Even among MAGA voters, 55% want AI to keep moving... but just 29% want the data center nearby. Now Trump says developers should pay host towns a "dividend." It's not left vs right anymore. It's: whose backyard? Would you take one next door for $1,000 a year?

Not "directly", just through the AI that read it.

Google quietly deleted one sentence from its privacy policy: "We don't show you personalized ads based on your content from Drive, Gmail, or Photos." Now, if you connect Gmail and Photos to its AI, summaries of that data can shape the ads you see in AI search. Google says ads won't be based "directly" on your inbox. Not directly. Just through the AI that read it. The AI assistant is free because you're the product. Did you switch it on?