‘The worry is far from fanciful’

‘The age of de-skilling’

Kwame Anthony Appiah at The Atlantic

With AI “going the way of Google — moving from the miraculous to the taken-for-granted — the anxiety has shifted, too, from apocalypse to atrophy,” says Kwame Anthony Appiah. The “term for it is unlovely but not inapt: de-skilling.” The “real puzzle isn’t whether de-skilling exists — it plainly does — but rather what kind of thing it is.” De-skilling is a “catchall term for losses of very different kinds: some costly, some trivial, some oddly generative.”

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‘Australia is closing the money laundering loopholes the US keeps open’

Brett Erickson at The Hill

Australian “reforms will finally bring lawyers, accountants and real-estate agents under anti-money laundering supervision,” and the country is “closing the very loopholes the U.S. continues to defend,” says Brett Erickson. The U.S. is “going backward,” as “three pillars of America’s financial crime architecture were either suspended, delayed or gutted.” Australia’s “reforms show what accountability looks like: Regulate the gatekeepers, close the real-estate loopholes and make professional facilitators subject to the same anti-money laundering standards as banks.”

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‘Women hold the key to ending polio for good’

Tunji Funsho at Time

The “most powerful force in the campaign” against African polio is “women vaccinators who go door to door — mothers who know every household,” says Tunji Funsho. Even in “places where women face barriers to participation, the trust they build within communities remains essential to reaching every child.” These “women aren’t just speaking about polio, they’re encouraging childhood vaccinations more broadly, promoting antenatal care, nutrition, maternal health, and supporting HIV testing.” It was “never just about polio.”

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‘The NBA’s gambling scandal was utterly predictable — and other pro sports will be next’

Michael Hiltzik at the Los Angeles Times

Sports leagues “spent years shunning gambling as a threat to their public image of integrity before embracing the siren call of big-time sports betting,” says Michael Hiltzik. They’ve “created a new underclass of gambling addicts while largely failing to fulfill their advocates’ assurances that state-sponsored and regulated gambling would produce a new, risk-free revenue stream.” Keeping their “image for integrity intact in this world of greedy and needy players and voracious gamblers is only going to get harder.”

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