“Mercy,” a film released in January 2026, depicts a dystopian Los Angeles in the near future: a city riddled with violence, homelessness, and civic disorder. California’s response is to set up the Mercy Capital Court, run entirely by an AI bot that goes by the name Judge Maddox. The judge can analyze evidence, determine whether the threshold for guilt has been met, and execute the defendant—all in a matter of 90 minutes.
AI is showing up in court cases, but only a human jury can grapple with the moral weight of assessing guilt
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Hostage-taking by nation-states is emerging as an overlooked consequence of the more unstable and dangerous world that’s been created by the fracturing rules-based order. In an increasingly might-is-right system of international relations, malign actors have [...]
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Everyone on Earth takes a private vote by pressing a red or blue button. If more than 50% of people press the blue button, everyone survives. If less than 50% of people press the blue [...]
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More than a third of Americans have lost relationships with friends, family members, romantic partners, or others due to political differences, according to a study. Mertcan Güngör and Peter Ditto examined survey data from thousands [...]
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Heightened immigration enforcement during the second Trump administration has not expanded job opportunities for U.S.-born workers and is associated with a reduction of employment for U.S.-born men with no more than a high school degree, [...]
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If you’re registered to vote in the United States and you’re not among the richest of the rich, political scientist Peter K. Enns has a message for you: Your voice still matters. So does data [...]
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The rare earths so essential to our modern technology have become a new diplomatic weapon—used to leverage influence and wield power, reshape global alliances, and exert economic dominance. For centuries, says Boston University historian Benjamin [...]
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“On behalf of President Donald J. Trump,” read 22 emails sent from the White House Presidential Personnel Office on Friday afternoon, April 24, 2026, “I am writing to inform you that your position as a [...]
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A physics-inspired model calibrated on 40 years of US congressional data pinpoints a spending threshold of roughly 1.8 million USD at which campaigns stop influencing who wins and start fueling polarization instead.This post was originally [...]
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If you suffer from information overload, or are unsure what to trust online, you’re not alone. Australians are increasingly disengaging from traditional news, turning instead to social media, influencers and—more recently—generative artificial intelligence (AI) chatbots [...]
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Imagine that a government builds a five-star airport without any roads leading to it. The terminal is immaculate, the runway is regulation length—but there is simply no way to get there.This post was originally published [...]
