Free Republic

Industry boosters argue the U.S. is in a race with China for technological supremacy, and thus the sprint has existential stakes. But many Americans view AI through the lens of issues much closer to home: skyrocketing electricity bills, looming job displacement, teenage chatbot addiction. Last October, after 134,000 people signed a statement calling for a halt to the development of superintelligence, “I was thinking, why are we getting military people, faith leaders, and everyone signing?” says Max Tegmark, a physicist whose nonprofit organization, The Future of Life Institute, issued the statement. “And then it hit me: they’re all rooting for...

A liberal Lutheran pastor and activist in Wisconsin resigned after his bishop told him endorsing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., for president in a Sunday sermon would violate denominational guidelines. Former Pastor Jonathan Barker resigned from Grace Lutheran Church in Kenosha and shed his credentials as a minister in the progressive Mainline Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, according to a letter from Bishop Paul D. Erickson of the Greater Milwaukee Synod.Erickson said he learned last Wednesday that Barker, 41, was planning to preach a sermon endorsing Ocasio-Cortez, a member of the informal far-left faction in the U.S. House of Representatives known...

A Michigan high school student was directed by her principal to remove religious references she included in a valedictory address she was expected to deliver on June 6. “For me, my future hope is found in my relationship with Christ,” Hillsdale High School senior Elizabeth Turner wrote in her prepared remarks. “By trusting in Him and choosing to live a life dedicated to bringing His kingdom glory, I can be confident that I am living a life with purpose and meaning. My identity is found by what God says and who I want to become is laid out in scripture,”...

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents have arrested two women in Miami and charged them with operating a major student visa fraud ring through which they tricked the federal government into granting more than 200 student visas to foreign nationals who were not students, agency officials and the U.S. attorney in Miami announced Thursday... An ICE media advisory called the operation the ``largest single visa fraud takedown in [the] agency's history.'' The visas involved foreign nationals fraudulently enrolled as students at Florida Language Institute...according to a grand jury indictment in the case. Whether foreign students show up for their assigned...