Manhattan-sized data centers set to power AI social video fluff. Soaring valuations for startups with TBD products. If you’re looking for anecdotal signs of an AI bubble, there are plenty.

In fact, three out of three historians that we asked agree: The economy is indeed in the grips of a major bubble around this technology. We called up these experts to better understand how explosions of investor speculation around the Next Big Thing tend to play out—why they happen, how they burst, and what comes after.

“History suggests that it’s extremely likely that, yes, we are in an AI bubble right now,” David Sicilia, associate professor of economic history at the University of Maryland, told us.

Tech bubble ingredients: While the dot-com boom might be the most reached-for analogy to the current moment, the history of business and technology is sprinkled with these sorts of tech-fueled investor frenzies, from railways in the 1840s to radio in the 1920s.

“It’s not inevitable that bubbles are going to develop around just any old new technology,” Lee Vinsel, associate professor of tech and society at Virginia Tech, said. “What seems more inevitable is seeing bubbles develop around technologies that are dubbed in the public understanding as ‘transformative’ from the get-go.”

Keep reading here.—PK

California Governor Gavin Newsom signed major AI legislation into law this week, establishing some of the country’s strongest safety regulations yet in Silicon Valley’s home state.

The law will require developers of the most advanced AI models to publish more details about safety steps taken in development and create more protections for whistleblowers at AI companies, among other provisions. It’s the first law of its kind in the US to specifically target catastrophic risks of cutting-edge frontier AI models.

It comes after Newsom vetoed a more muscular attempt at AI regulation a year ago from the same author, state Senator Scott Wiener. This latest iteration incorporated some of the less contentious elements from that first try, as determined by a working group report Newsom requested when he vetoed the 2024 bill.

AI safety advocates say the law is a good start that could inspire other states to act, but doesn’t necessarily go far enough. Detractors say its scope is too focused on large companies and that disclosures risk divulging proprietary information. OpenAI, Alphabet, and Meta had lobbied against the bill, claiming they would rather have federal regulation, while Anthropic supported it. The law also comes after the House of Representatives attempted to ban all states from regulating AI for years as part of President Trump’s budget bill; the Senate removed the ban from the bill before it passed.

“We now actually have a bill passed by a state in the US explicitly dealing with regulation of frontier AI,” Gideon Futerman, a special projects associate at the Center for AI Safety, told us. “It’s really vital we now have these on the books, especially since there was this attempt to preempt and stop laws previously.”

Keep reading here.—PK

CEOs of some of the biggest companies in the US have been outspoken of late about the ways they believe AI will disrupt workforces.

“AI is going to change literally every job,” Walmart CEO Doug McMillon said last month.

Ford CEO Jim Farley echoed those remarks at an event in Detroit this week.

“The efficiency and automation always rips through our economy. And it will take jobs away from all sectors of the economy,” he said, speaking at a summit Ford hosted called Accelerate the Essential Economy. “Listen to what the CEO of Walmart said this week.”

US Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer, speaking at the same event, offered a more optimistic view on how the technology stands to affect US workers.

“I don’t think it’s a hollowing out of anything. I really think it’s just a shift change, no different than the industrial age, no different than the technology age,” she said. “We will adapt.”

US workers must not only adapt, but lead the way on AI adoption, Chavez-DeRemer argued: “Because if America doesn’t do it, another country will. And that’s what the president wants, is to be dominant in AI.”

Keep reading here.—JG

Hold please: The New York Times’ Brian X. Chen declares “we finally have free anti-robocall tools that work.” He helpfully walks through the steps to activate the new feature on an iPhone.

Shop talk: Retail Brew has notes on Google’s updates to AI Mode for shoppers, with the aim of making online shopping “much more visual” and letting users “shop conversationally.”

The feeling of getting a 5/5 on the Brew’s weekly news quiz has been compared to getting a company-wide shout out from your boss. It’s that satisfying.