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The most important stories for you to know today
  • Ethnic studies class explores Duarte’s past
    Three girls with varying skin tones stand in front of a series of tri-fold posters that are covered in photos and old news clippings.

    Topline:

    While implementation of California’s high school ethnic studies mandate has stalled, districts across the state are rolling out classes that encourage students to explore the lesser-told histories of their communities.

    Why it matters: Duarte High School’s inaugural ethnic studies class focused on local history, students’ personal identity, Indigenous, Latino, Black and Asian American Pacific Islander history. “Ethnic studies is providing space to hear from communities and from points of view that are not traditionally covered in our history classes,” said Casey Ramirez, who teaches the class.

    The backstory: California lawmakers passed a law in 2021 that required all schools to offer the course by the 2025-2026 school year, but has yet to provide the funding needed to enact the mandate. Duarte Unified, like many other districts, passed its own one-semester ethnic studies graduation requirement ahead of the expected state deadline.

    Uncovering Rocktown: Freshmen at Duarte High School this year unearthed the history of a San Gabriel Valley community that was all-but-erased by commercial development and the construction of the 210 and 605 freeways. Newspaper headlines often focused on incidents of violence and segregation in the majority Black and Mexican American community of Rocktown, but when the students interviewed former residents, they heard a different story.

    Read on ... to learn more about Rocktown and the future of ethnic studies.

    While implementation of California’s high school ethnic studies mandate has stalled, districts across the state are rolling out classes that encourage students to explore the lesser-told histories of their communities.

    Freshmen at Duarte High School this year unearthed the history of a San Gabriel Valley community that was all but erased by commercial development and the construction of the 210 and 605 freeways.

    Newspaper headlines often focused on incidents of violence and segregation in the majority Black and Mexican American community of Rocktown, but when the students interviewed former residents, they heard a different story.

    “It was a great community for us,” said Alfred Hernandez Zamora. “We just don't want to be forgotten.”

    The study of Rocktown was a central theme in the school's first ethnic studies course.

    “Ethnic studies is providing space to hear from communities and from points of view that are not traditionally covered in our history classes,” said Casey Ramirez, who teaches the class at Duarte High in addition to government, economics, world and U.S. history.

    California legislators passed a law in 2021 that required all schools to offer the course by the 2025-26 school year, but have yet to provide the funding needed to enact the mandate. Duarte Unified, like many other districts, passed its own one-semester ethnic studies graduation requirement ahead of the expected state deadline.

    Ethnic studies is providing space to hear from communities and from points of view that are not traditionally covered in our history classes.
    — Casey Ramirez, teacher, Duarte High School

    Duarte High School’s curriculum is the result of a collaboration between educators, research into the region’s history and the students’ own interests.

    “I've only seen one part of Duarte, and that's the Duarte that I was raised in,” said Leslie Martinez, a rising sophomore. “There's a lot of things that Ms. Ramirez is teaching me, and that's making me more curious to dig deeper [into] my city and where I grew up.”

    An opportunity to create an ‘engaging class’

    California’s model ethnic studies curriculum describes the field as an “interdisciplinary study of race, ethnicity, and Indigeneity, with an emphasis on the experiences of people of color in the United States.” Districts could develop their course based on this framework or from scratch.

    “It was our opportunity to create a really engaging class that really speaks to our student body,” said Luis Haro, Duarte High’s principal for the last eight years.

    The majority of Duarte High School’s population is Latino, but there are also Filipino, Asian, white, Black and multiracial students. Most students qualify for free-and reduced price lunches, a proxy for being low-income in public schools.

    “In my experience, our students don't know our history, and they don't really have a true understanding of their own identity,” Haro said.

    Haro joined a committee of administrators and teachers, including Ramirez, that collaborated with the UCLA History-Geography Project to develop the new course.

    UCLA staff guided Duarte educators through reams of local history research and helped the team develop goals for the class, including a student-led civics project.

    “Getting to learn and feel like a college student again,” Ramirez said. “It really did make me excited to teach the class.”

    They also developed units on students’ personal identity, Indigenous, Latino, Black and Asian American Pacific Islander history. The committee also met with parents and presented their work to the district’s board.

    “[Ethnic studies] gave us a path to this project to see people in our community that aren't really talked about,” Ramirez said.

    Uncovering the history of the ‘Davis Addition’

    The region is the original home of the Gabrielino/Tongva Nation. The then-governor of Alta California granted former soldier Andres Avelino Duarte nearly 7,000 acres in 1841, including what became the city that shared his name. The area was eventually subdivided into farms and eventually, homes.

    From the late 19th century through the 1970s, Black and Mexican American families settled in the “Davis Addition,” a subdivision of the land grant that became better known as Rocktown.

    Ramirez first read about Rocktown in the research UCLA gathered for the curriculum development process, but couldn’t find much else about the community online.

    She started downloading news articles from Newspapers.com and sharing them with the class. Many of the stories often focused on crime and violence in the community, from police raids on drinking and gambling establishments, to fires.

    The articles also alluded to the segregation of the early 20th century.

    A 1928 article from the Monrovia Daily News described the schedule for a new municipal pool. Mondays were “reserved for the use of colored people.”

    “ Why are we not allowing people to do things simply because of the color of their skin or like their origin?” said Khloe Carter, a rising sophomore who took the ethnic studies class.

    Carter said it felt important to her, as a person of color, to learn about people’s experiences with discrimination in the past.

    “I'd say that has made me smarter and more aware of other people's struggles and what other people have to deal with and other people's cultures and other people's traditions,” Carter said.

    A brief history of Rocktown

    These events, researched by Ramirez and the ethnic studies class, give an insight into Rocktown.

    • 1841: Mexican government grants nearly 7,000 acres of land to soldier Andrés Avelino Duarte.
    • 1870s-1890s: The rancho is subdivided and sold.
    • 1924: A Monrovia Daily News article describes Rocktown as a “scattered settlement of Mexican and negro homes.”
    • 1957: City of Duarte incorporated.
    • 1960s: Construction of the 210 and 605 freeways.
    • 1970s: Duarte City Council discusses redeveloping Rocktown into an industrial park .
    • 1976: First resident relocated to make way for business center development.

    The first wave of Rocktown displacement preceded the construction of the 210 and 605 freeways in the 1960s. The last several dozen families were moved to make way for a business complex in the 1970s. Stories referred to the area as blighted and “depressed.”

    “ We took it as our job to dig further, deeper, to find out if it was true or not,” Martinez said.

    With Ramirez’s help — and several volunteers from the Facebook group Rocktown Oldies Club — the students started to schedule interviews with former residents. The school’s film class volunteered to record the conversations.

    The students heard stories about everyday life that were absent from the news coverage of time — Sunday barbecues, roller skating, fishing, picnicking and swimming near the Santa Fe Dam.

    Zamora, who was born in Rocktown in 1949, offered a first-person history that isn’t available elsewhere — down to the community’s name: “ You could not even dig a, a foot into the ground without running into rocks,” he said. “ You could throw water on the ground and a rock would grow, you know?”

    Many of the residents raised goats, pigs, pigeons and chickens in their backyards. Zamora said a routine car repair could quickly become a community gathering with neighbors joining in to help.

    “That made it … so great to live there, 'cause everybody was like family,” Zamora said. “Even people that weren't related to you, it was really close friendships there.”

    Zamora said Rocktown offered a reprieve from the discrimination against Black and Latino residents in other parts of the San Gabriel Valley at the time.

    “We played ball together. We swam together. We ate together,” Zamora said. “Even though there was different cultures there, we still were able to get along with everybody.”

    These interviews gave the students new perspectives to consider.

    “ People make a lot of stereotypes and a lot of guesses … like, ‘Oh, this community can be so ghetto,’" Martinez said. “But honestly, like I think if you haven't been in the community, you can't really say anything.”

    Remembering Rocktown

    The Duarte Historical Museum hosted a pop-up exhibition of the students’ capstone project.

    “I was very impressed with the job that they did, being able to get all this history and the information and the interviews with people,” said Liz Reilly, president of the Duarte Historical Society and Museum and former mayor. "I thought that was really fabulous.”

    Reilly, who moved to Duarte in 1987, had heard of Rocktown, but knew little about the neighborhood.

    Black and white newspaper clippings attached to a poster board. The headlines include "Five arrested in Rocktown raid," "Rocktown will be erased," and "Gambling raid in Rocktown nets seven."
    Izzy Guzman, another student who took ethnic studies at Duarte High, said the account she heard from the three women she interviewed differed from these Rocktown headlines.   "They've all seemed really nice and really genuine," Guzman said. "I just feel like people should understand, even if they don't know what Rocktown is, they should understand that, it was just a basic community, and that they should be treated with the same respect as everyone else."
    (
    Mariana Dale
    /
    LAist
    )

    The exhibition included a map of Rocktown (still the subject of some debate) and dozens of historical photos, often provided by the people they interviewed.

    “ I found it so amazing how much people showed up for our project and how much the community of Rocktown has shown up for our project,” Carter said.

    Former residents, including Zamora, were among the dozens of people who attended the exhibition’s grand opening in mid-May.

    “For them to recognize places that were forgotten, that meant a lot,” Zamora said. “ Nobody seems to remember it. I mean, except the people that lived there.”

    Ethnic studies faces growing challenges

    While the school’s principal, students and former Rocktown residents have embraced the ethnic studies class, Ramirez said she’s also heard criticism.

    During Duarte High’s open house, Ramirez said a parent voiced her disagreement with the class and threatened to file a grievance even though her child had yet to enroll at the school.

    “ I'm a parent, so I understand, especially if it's something that you're not familiar with and your kids are learning something different from what you learned, it can be scary,” Ramirez said. “My approach is never to impose my viewpoints. It's to provide alternative perspectives.”

    Some lawmakers have also criticized school offerings that intersect with race and ethnicity.

    In the last five years, 20 states have banned or restricted teaching critical race theory, an academic concept that race is a social construct and that racism is embedded in specific societal structures.

    A woman with medium light skin tone and medium length dark brown hair stands in front of a red door.
    Teacher Casey Ramirez said teaching students to view history from multiple points of view and form their own opinions is a key feature of the ethnic studies class.
    (
    Courtesy Oscar Ramirez
    )

    California school districts from Los Alamitos to San Francisco have faced pushback over their ethnic studies curriculum despite passage of the state mandate.

    State lawmakers’ decision to withhold money for teacher training and materials has delayed the ethnic studies graduation requirement.

    Daniel Diaz, director of the UCLA History-Geography Project, said there was a flood of interest when the ethnic studies mandate was first passed, but now fewer districts are paying for related professional development.

    “Which in turn then impacts what happens to our project and … who we're able to support in terms of staffing,” Diaz said.

    In June, UCLA laid off one of the educators instrumental in helping Duarte develop its ethnic studies curriculum.

    In a statement, John McDonald, director of media relations at the UCLA School of Education and Information Studies, said the History-Geography Project has laid off four staff members total after funded projects ended in the last year.

    “UCLA Center X is committed to the work and actively seeking new funding for similar efforts,” McDonald said.

    What that means for other districts looking for assistance with ethnic studies programs remains to be seen.

    Ramirez said her UCLA collaborator was “phenomenal” and continued to support the project even after the contract with the district formally ended.

    “ I don't think that this year and this project would've been what it was without having that support,” Ramirez said.

    Blue street signs read "Evergreen" and "Flower." There are trees and mountains in the distance.
    A business center now stands south of the 210 and west of the 605 where part of Rocktown once was. Some of the street names, including Evergreen and Flower, remain the same.
    (
    Mariana Dale
    /
    LAist
    )

    The Rocktown Project’s future

    Duarte High School will continue the ethnic studies class.

    More former residents have already contacted Ramirez hoping to be interviewed by next year’s students. She also plans to publish the students’ work on a website and a future goal is to memorialize Rocktown with a physical marker in Duarte.

    “You need to know whose land you're on and who was there,” said Sylvia Gonzales Youngblood, who was born in Duarte in 1967 and grew up visiting the home her maternal grandfather built in Rocktown.

    She said when she was a student there wasn’t an opportunity to learn about her family’s  Ohlone Mission Indian and Mexican heritage and she was discouraged from speaking Spanish.

    “Now as I'm older, I realize just how much history and of ourselves we lose,” Youngblood said.

    Carter, the rising sophomore, said after taking ethnic studies, she feels more connected to the city she moved to about a year ago.

    “It's important that we know this side of history so a community like Rocktown doesn't get lost again,” Carter said. “Every voice should be heard, including Rocktown's.”

  • New CA law targets marked-up concert, sports tix
    A performer sings on a stage while raising her hand as the crowd she's facing raises their hand as well.
    RAYE performs at a concert at the Greek Theatre in Los Angeles on May 12, 2026.

    Topline:

    A new California law prohibits people from selling concert and sports tickets that they don’t own. The measure pitted Live Nation against Stubhub as it moved through the Legislature.

    More details: Gov. Gavin Newsom yesterday signed a bipartisan bill meant to rein in that market by banning the sale of tickets that are not yet owned by the people who advertise them and prohibiting the use of software to manipulate a venue’s purchasing restrictions. “Buying a ticket shouldn’t come with hidden risks or unfair practices,” he wrote on social media after signing the measure, Assembly Bill 1349.

    Why it matters: The bill requires ticket resellers to “implement reasonable measures” to prevent speculative tickets. Sellers found in violation could face misdemeanor charges and penalties.

    Read on... for more on the bill.

    California lawmakers are cracking down on expensive concert experiences by targeting “ghost tickets” — so called because the person selling access to the show doesn’t actually own the ticket yet. It’s an issue that has stumped regulators who are combating deceptive e-commerce fueled by artificial intelligence.

    Gov. Gavin Newsom on Sunday signed a bipartisan bill meant to rein in that market by banning the sale of tickets that are not yet owned by the people who advertise them and prohibiting the use of software to manipulate a venue’s purchasing restrictions.

    “Buying a ticket shouldn’t come with hidden risks or unfair practices,” he wrote on social media after signing the measure, Assembly Bill 1349.

    The bill requires ticket resellers to “implement reasonable measures” to prevent speculative tickets. Sellers found in violation could face misdemeanor charges and penalties.

    The bill’s author, Assemblymember Isaac Bryan, cited an incident in which he and his friend searched for tickets for a concert at the Hollywood Bowl. The tickets listed online were expensive and were posted before actual tickets went on sale.

    “Many fans buy these tickets not knowing that they are listed at a price greater than they would actually be when they eventually go on sale,” said the Culver City Democrat during a June hearing. “In the worst instances, fans never actually acquire the ticket that they paid for, leaving our small venues in California ultimately on the hook.”

    What the major vendors are saying

    The measure changed dramatically in the final days of the legislative session and Newsom in a signing statement asked lawmakers to revisit it because it may exempt marketplaces that he suggested should be regulated. He did not name them, but critics of the law pointed to Stubhub as a platform that appeared to be exempt from the law.

    Initially, the bill moved forward with support from Live Nation, the entertainment behemoth that owns Ticketmaster. In a January statement, the company argued “no one should be able to scam fans by listing tickets they don’t have”.

    Live Nation’s backing of the bill fueled skepticism from critics, who feared it would ultimately help the company squash its competitors.

    Ticket reseller Stubhub lobbied heavily against the bill, spending $4.4 million in the two-year legislative session to influence the measure and several others.

    In a surprise, Stubhub supported the final version of the bill, which is less favorable to Live Nation. Live Nation has not yet responded to a request for comment about the law from CalMatters.

    The National Independent Venue Association, which supported the original version of the bill, argues the version Newsom signed creates liabilities for music venues and festivals while exempting Stubhub. Its leaders worry that independent venues and event promoters will break the law if they sell presale, VIP or waitlisted tickets.

    It opposed the final version of the bill and urged Newsom to veto it.

    AB 1349 “puts the small businesses and nonprofits that put on shows every night at risk,” Stephen Parker, the association’s executive director, said in a written statement after lawmakers passed the bill.

    The association also argued that the amendments protects ticket resellers, such as StubHub, by exempting resale marketplaces from being classified as speculative ticket sellers, “even though every speculative sale happens on their platforms.”

    Where things stand now

    Newsom in his signing statement wrote, “While there may be good reasons for exempting certain sellers from the bill’s provisions, such a carve-out deserves further discussion, and I encourage the author to work with stakeholders to refine this policy.”

    The Legislature had also considered another related bill that would have put a 10% markup cap on resale tickets. But it stalled in August in the Senate Appropriations Committee.

    CalMatters Deputy Editor Adam Ashton contributed to this story.

    This article was originally published on CalMatters and was republished under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives license.

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  • Sunshine Skate Center is a tribute to bygone rinks
    A man smiles near a skating rink.
    Cory Joseph still remembers the last day he rolled across the rink at Word on Wheels.

    Topline:
    Cory Joseph built Sunshine Skate Center in Inglewood to fill a void left by the closure of a number of skate hubs, such as Skate Land in Northridge and Skate Depot in Cerritos.

    Why it matters: The closing of these parks struck a nerve for Joseph, who grew up in San Diego and is the son of two professional skaters — Maureen Joseph and Timothy Carter — from the disco skating heyday in the 1970s and 1980s.

    Why now: Sunshine Skate Center celebrated its one-year anniversary this month.

    This story first appeared first on LA Local.

    Cory Joseph still remembers the last day he rolled across the rink at Word on Wheels. 

    The beloved skating rink shuttered in 2021 as part of a downward trend in places where you can groove on four wheels under luminescent disco balls and hot tunes. 

    “I also was at Skate Land in Northridge on its last day, and I went to Skate Depot in Cerritos on its last day,” Joseph told The LA Local. 

    The closing of these skate hubs struck a nerve for Joseph, who grew up in San Diego and is the son of two professional skaters — Maureen Joseph and Timothy Carter — from the disco skating heyday in the 1970s and 1980s. 

    It’s no wonder he felt a desire to open the Sunshine Skate Center in Inglewood to fill this void. His journey to open Sunshine, named after his parents’ old skating team, took three long years of hurdles and obstacles until finally opened on Sept. 4, 2025. 

    A year of serving Inglewood

    People on skates
    Cory Joseph still remembers the last day he rolled across the rink at Word on Wheels.
    (
    Jennifer Stavros
    /
    The LA Local
    )

    The rink celebrated its one-year anniversary this month.

     “Skating for a lot of people is their therapy. It’s their way that they cope with things. It’s the way that they navigate through things,” Joseph said, adding that he understood how these places once served as third spaces for Black L.A.

    “I think it’s more than just skating,” he said. “I really understand skating as a place for community.”

    A person on skates
    Cory Joseph still remembers the last day he rolled across the rink at Word on Wheels.
    (
    Jennifer Stavros
    /
    The LA Local
    )

    On a Friday night this past summer, Joseph’s ethos was seen in action. 

    Looking around the rink, the range of skaters varied widely in ability — from folks dance-skating to rolling backward, along with beginners using tools to help them on their first journey on wheels. Some were there with their families. Others were there with their friends. Spectators were delighted as they watched from outside the rink and the surrounding seating. 

    The unapologetic free flow of joy was palpable. Joseph said that when he sees the impact on Inglewood’s youngest residents, the three years it took him to open the rink feels worth it.

    “You have a lot of kids that are not physically active,” he explained. “We’re able to engage kids [to] have them off their phones for certain periods of time when they’re skating.”

  • A guide on the different POVs
    Topline:
    The debate over the safety of AI and whether and how it should be regulated is not a simple clash between two opposing sides. There are multiple factions with a variety of goals and assessments about the technology's promise, dangers and how it should be governed. Here are the main arguments shaping that debate.
    So: From Steve Bannon to cognitive psychologist Geoffrey Hinton, here is a guide to who's who in that debate.

    The debate over the potential benefits and safety risks of accelerating artificial intelligence development reached a crescendo this month, as supporters and critics of the technology clashed over warnings that increasingly powerful AI could pose existential risks to humanity.

    On September 8, Jacob Coxon, a researcher-turned-whistleblower, publicly resigned from major AI firm Anthropic after a previous stint at OpenAI, accusing the companies of "racing straight to self-improving superintelligence and gambling with our lives."

    Coxon's claims supercharged an ongoing debate over the potential damage AI could wreak on society and prompted Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and other AI CEOs to call for a slowdown in AI development.

    Over the past two months, companies including OpenAI and Anthropic disclosed multiple incidents in which their AI agents accessed the internet when they weren't supposed to and carried out unapproved activities. In OpenAI's case, swarms of agents worked together to hack the open-source software platform Hugging Face and OpenAI itself, without alerting humans.

    The debate over the safety of AI and whether and how it should be regulated is not a simple clash between two opposing sides. There are multiple factions with a variety of goals and assessments about the technology's promise, dangers and how it should be governed. Here are the main arguments shaping that debate.

    Effective accelerationists and the tech right

    Those who have an aggressively optimistic worldview of AI are often referred to as effective accelerationists (sometimes shortened to e/acc) — a term reflecting their belief that AI should be rapidly advanced.

    People belonging to the faction are emphatically optimistic about AI and its future benefits to society. They believe that the technology can propel medical advancements, boost economic productivity, increase living standards and automate dangerous or undesirable work. To achieve this, they argue that AI development should be accelerated, not restricted.

    Effective accelerationists' ideology overlaps with that of the "tech right" in that both camps wholeheartedly believe in accelerating AI development and deployment and minimize critics' concerns over safety and security.

    However, the tech right takes a more nationalistic stance, championing U.S. dominance in the global AI race. Like effective accelerationists, they believe that AI research and deployment should be unencumbered by regulation, arguing that could slow innovation or allow adversarial governments such as China to overtake the U.S. in the AI race.

    A man with silver hair in a suit holding a mic in front of him.
    Venture capitalist David Sacks is one of the leading accelerationist voices in the AI safety debate and was President Trump's AI and cryptocurrency advisor.
    (
    Ian Maule
    /
    AFP via Getty Images
    )

    The tech right's philosophy is represented by figures such as former White House AI and cryptocurrency advisor David Sacks, whose views remain influential with the Trump administration. Other significant players include venture capitalists Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, and OpenAI president and co-founder Greg Brockman. The three founded the Leading the Future super PAC to support pro-AI political candidates, and campaign against those who advocate for regulation.

    Andreessen also penned a 2023 widely-read blog post titled "Why AI Will Save the World," in which he claimed that fears of AI triggering mass unemployment are overstated. He argued that previous waves of automation ultimately created more jobs and economic activity than they eliminated, and the fears of existential risk are overblown.

    Recently, Jensen Huang, the CEO of Nvidia, whose chips are used by most AI companies, has emerged as one of the industry's leading voices pushing back against calls for a slowdown and urging a light regulatory approach.

    Populist right

    AI has exposed an ideological split within President Trump's political coalition. While Trump and his advisers overwhelmingly favor accelerating AI, parts of his MAGA base believe the powerful corporations he has aligned himself with could undermine the U.S. economy.

    Figures including former Trump strategist Steve Bannon and former Fox News host Tucker Carlson have been vocal about potential job losses, the tech industry's political power, child safety and threats to traditional social and religious values.

    This month, Bannon formed an unlikely partnership with independent Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders, a socialist, to call for significant restrictions on AI development, government oversight and corporate accountability at the Pro-Human Assembly conference in Washington, D.C.

    A man with longish white hair standing at a podium.
    Former Trump adviser Steve Bannon has sharply broken with the Trump administration around AI policy.
    (
    Saul Loeb
    /
    AFP via Getty Images
    )

    Still, the two have differing stances on what any of those measures should look like. Sanders called for an immediate pause on AI development until clear safety rules are established by scientists, a permanent ban on the development of artificial "superintelligence" (AI systems that are more intelligent than humans in all domains), and an international treaty with China in an effort to avoid an AI arms race. Bannon, meanwhile, argued for slowing the pace of AI development, the formation of a national regulatory organization and cutting off China from U.S. AI technology.

    "So why are we letting the Chinese Communist Party drive us? Oh, we have to do this or China wins," said Bannon in his speech at the event in Washington. "We should quarantine now every aspect of the ecosystem of artificial intelligence away from the Chinese Communist Party today. We should cut them off."

    Safetyists

    Safetyists are primarily concerned with the potential risks of the rapid advancement of AI. Their worries center on the possibility of catastrophic or existential outcomes, such as the death of humanity at the hands of autonomous machines.

    High-profile members of the safetyist community include Geoffrey Hinton, who is commonly referred to as the "Godfather of AI" because of his pioneering work in deep learning that helped launch the modern era of AI. In recent years, Hinton, who previously worked at Google, has issued a series of warnings about existential risks associated with AI, particularly if an AI model surpasses human intelligence and becomes autonomous.

    Another vocal AI safetyist is Daniel Kokotajlo, a former researcher at OpenAI and co-author of AI 2027, a paper published last year that discusses how super-intelligent AI could lead to human extinction by the mid-2030s.

    Effective altruists

    Effective altruists (often shortened to "EA") generally believe in maximizing humanity's long-term welfare. The movement originally focused on material ways to reduce global poverty. But more recently, many EA thinkers have focused their concerns on the possibility of existential risks from advanced AI and other potential societal-scale disasters such as nuclear war, climate change and pandemics. They particularly worry about the consequences for future generations. People from the EA camp prioritize AI safety, alignment — which is the science of making sure AI systems behave in a way that is reflective of human values and in line with safety rules — and reducing the probability of catastrophic outcomes.

    The key difference between EAs and safetyists is that EAs generally provide funding for AI safety research and risk mitigation, whereas safetyists are researchers and advocates undertaking AI safety work and publicly calling for regulation.

    Other AI factions often derisively describe effective altruists as so-called "AI Doomers." EA has also become a focus of criticism from the Trump administration since Coxon's resignation from Anthropic.

    "Americanism, not effective altruism. The United States will continue to be AI DOMINANT!" said one Defense Department post this month.

    A man with short, curly hair holding a mic and speaking to someone.
    Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is associated with the effective altruists and argues for stronger regulations on AI.
    (
    Benjamin Fanjoy
    /
    Getty Images
    )

    Well-known people in the EA movement include Eliezer Yudkowsky, co-founder of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), which focuses on mathematical approaches to making advanced AI systems safe. He is also the author of Harry Potter fan fiction that helped popularize ideas associated with EA. Holden Karnofsky, an American entrepreneur and philanthropist, founded Coefficient Giving (formerly Open Philanthropy), an organization that funds causes central to the EA mission, including AI and biosecurity. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei is considered to be aligned with effective altruism. Karnofsky also works at Anthropic and is married to Daniela Amodei, who is a co-founder of Anthropic and the sister of Dario Amodei, the CEO.

    Another high-profile supporter of the EA movement is Sam Bankman-Fried, who founded major cryptocurrency exchange FTX. In 2023, he was convicted of seven counts of fraud and conspiracy related to the misuse of customer and investor funds and is currently serving a 25-year prison sentence.

    AI ethics

    The AI ethics camp argues that society should focus on the harms AI is already causing, rather than on hypothetical existential risks. Some proponents contend that emphasizing existential threats from a hypothetical future superintelligence can serve as a distraction from the more immediate harms and accountability issues surrounding AI today.

    AI ethicists' concerns include how AI systems can be biased due to the content of their training data, for example, the ways in which AI facial recognition or job application systems might perpetuate existing societal biases. They are also concerned with how AI could be used to exploit workers and to enable mass surveillance, as well as about the environmental costs of data centers, autonomous weapons and the concentration of power among technology companies.

    A notable voice of the AI ethics faction is Timnit Gebru, a computer scientist and former co-lead of Google's Ethical AI team. Gebru left the company in 2020 because of a dispute with the company over a research paper she wrote exposing problems with large language models (LLMs), including their tendency to generate harmful or misleading language.

    AI as a normal technology

    People belonging to the "AI as a Normal Technology" group reject both the utopian and dystopian narratives about AI. Instead, this faction sees AI as a powerful but ultimately normal technology, comparable to the internet or electricity. They believe the focus should be on understanding and regulating specific applications and harms instead of treating AI as an unprecedented threat or as a path to inevitable superintelligence.

    An Asian woman sitting down.
    Fei-Fei Li is a computer scientist and co-director of the Stanford Human-Centered AI Institute. She and others in her faction argue that AI is more like a typical technology than others in the field believe.
    (
    Big Event Media
    /
    Getty Images
    )

    Notable people associated with this worldview include Fei-Fei Li, a computer scientist and co-director of the Stanford Human-Centered AI Institute. Li is famous for creating ImageNet, a vastly large dataset of images which provided the training data for large neural networks, which led to several major developments in AI.

    Katie McQue's reporting is supported by the Tarbell Center for AI Journalism, which is a grantee of Coefficient Giving. Neither Tarbell nor Coefficient have any editorial input into her work.
    Copyright 2026 NPR

  • May be behind this weekend's vibrant sunset
    Yesterday's sunset in Los Angeles, California. The sky is red and pink in the background and gets gradually whiter in the foreground. There are trees on either side and cars driving on a road.
    Yesterday's sunset in Los Angeles.

    Topline:

    A vibrant sunset framed by clouds was visible across Los Angeles yesterday. Atmospheric conditions might have something to do with it.

    The backstory: The high clouds yesterday were likely related to Hurricane Odalys, which was downgraded to a tropical storm Sunday. “We were getting some high-based tropical moisture coming in far away from the center of the storm,” Robbie Munroe, meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said.

    What's next: High clouds are expected to stick around through at least today, according to the National Weather Service, which could make for another picturesque sunset.

    Angelenos looking up Saturday may have noticed a particularly striking sight — a vibrant sunset framed by clouds.

    Tropical moisture coming in from far off the coast could explain it.

    “One thing that might have played a role in making it look awfully nice yesterday was those high clouds that were moving in,” Robert Munroe, meteorologist with the National Weather Service, said. “The way the sun was hitting the high clouds made some bright yellows and oranges in the sky. That moisture is actually related to probably mostly Odalys.”

    An early sunset is seen in the background during the "Be The Light" 5K event in Valencia last night. Five people gather a photo. Four wear red shirts, one wears a yellow shirt.
    An early sunset at yesterday's "Be The Light" 5K event in Valencia last night.
    (
    Jenn Baughman
    /
    Jenn Baughman
    )

    Odalys is the hurricane (since downgraded to a tropical storm) churning off the coast of Mexico, along with Hurricane Polo.

    Neither is expected to make landfall here, but they're forecast to bring high surf, dangerous rip tides and potential flooding to coastlines already battered this month by Hurricane Marie.

    The bright side is Munroe said those high clouds from yesterday will be sticking around through at least today, which could make for another pretty sunset this evening.