Kevin Frazier will join the Crump College of Law at St. Thomas University as an Assistant Professor starting this Fall. He currently is a clerk on the Montana Supreme Court.
Bad weather rarely causes a plane to crash — but the low probability of such a crash isn’t because nature lacks the power to send a plane woefully off course. In fact, as recently as 2009, a thunderstorm caused a crash resulting in 228 deaths.
Instead, two main factors explain why bad weather no longer poses an imminent threat to your longevity: first, we’ve improved our ability to detect storms. And, second and most importantly, we’ve acknowledged that the risks of flying through such storms isn’t worth it. The upshot is that when you don’t know where you’re going and if your plane can get you there, you should either stop or, if possible, postpone the trip until the path is in sight and the plane is flight worthy.
The leaders of AI look a lot like pilots flying through a thunderstorm — they can’t see where they’re headed and they’re unsure of the adequacy of their planes. Before a crash, we need to steer AI development out of the storm and onto a course where everyone, including the general public, can safely and clearly track its progress.
Despite everyone from Sam Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, to Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister of the UK, acknowledging the existential risksposed by AI, some AI optimists are ignoring the warning lights and pushing for continued development. Take Reid Hoffman for example. Hoffman, the co-founder of LinkedIn, has been "engaged in an aggressive thought-leadership regimen to extol the virtues of A.I” in recent months in an attempt to push back against those raising redflags, according to The New York Times.
Hoffman and others are engaging in AI both-side-ism, arguing that though AI development may cause some harm, it will also create societally beneficial outcomes.The problem is that such an approach doesn’t weigh the magnitude of those goods and evils. And, according to individuals as tech savvy as Prime Minister Sunak, those evils may be quite severe. In other words, the good and bad of AI is not an apples-to-apples comparison -- it’s more akin to an apples to obliterated oranges situation (the latter referring to the catastrophic outcomes AI may lead to).
No one doubts that AI development in “clear skies” could bring about tremendous good.For instance, it’s delightful to think of a world in which AI replaces dangerous jobs and generates sufficient wealth to fund a universal basic income.The reality is that storm clouds have already gathered.The path to any sort of AI utopia is not only unclear but, more likely, unavailable.
Rather than keep AI development in the air during such conditions, we need to issue a sort of ground stop and test how well different AI tools can navigate the chaotic political, cultural, and economic conditions that define the modern era. This isn’t a call for a moratorium on AI development -- that’s already been called for (and ignored). Rather, it’s a call for test flights.
“Model evaluation” is the AI equivalent of such test flights. The good news is researchers such as Toby Shevlane and others have outlined specific ways for AI developers to use such evaluations to identify dangerous capabilities and measure the probability of AI tools to cause harm in application. Shevlane calls on AI developers to run these "test flights", to share their results with external researchers, and to have those results reviewed by an independent, external auditor to assess the safety of deploying an AI tool.
Test flights allow a handful of risk-loving people to try potentially dangerous technology in a controlled setting. Consider that back in 2010 one of Boeing's test flights of its 787 Dreamliner resulted in an onboard fire. Only after detecting and fixing such glitches did the plane become available for commercial use.
There’s a reason we only get on planes that have been tested and that have a fixed destination. We need to mandate test flights for AI development. We also need to determine where we expect AI to take us as a society. AI leaders may claim that it's on Congress to require such testing and planning, but the reality is that those leaders could and should self-impose such requirements.
The Wright Brothers did not force members of the public to test their planes — nor should AI developers.
U.S. President Donald Trump speaks during a“ Steel Across America” event ahead of the 25th anniversary of the Sept. 11th attacks on the Ellipse near the White House on Sept. 8, 2026 in Washington, D.C. President Trump welcomed 9/ 11 first responders to the Tunnel to Towers Foundation’ s“ Steel Across America” event featuring a 16,900- pound, 21- foot steel beam recovered.
For Trump, even 9/11 is an opportunity
There was a reason organizers of the 9/11 ceremony in Manhattan told President Trump he could not speak at this year’s memorial service.
A good one, it turns out.
Because in a speech he gave on Tuesday in Washington, he did exactly what they were presumably worried about — he made it about himself.
According to The New York Times, Trump had wanted a speaking role at the service, but the National Sept. 11 Memorial and Museum, which oversees the site, said no, as they’ve maintained for the past decade-plus that the venue and event should be nonpartisan.
Trump has long used awful tragedies to either puff himself up, trash political opponents, or sell lies to the American people.
He blamed a deadly plane crash at Washington National Airport last year on diversity, equity and inclusion policies. He blamed Puerto Ricans for the devastation they endured after Hurricane Maria in 2017. He reportedly considered withholding disaster relief after the California wildfires based on the way affected regions voted. In an interview on Fox News meant to commemorate the 75th anniversary of D-Day in Normandy, he used the occasion to slam former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi…with graves of the dead behind him.
And now, as we approach the 25th anniversary of what many New Yorkers consider the darkest day in modern history, Trump has done it again.
He told a rambling, nonsensical story — one he’s told before — about going to Ground Zero just after terrorists flew two commercial jets into the twin towers. In the story, which no one has been able to verify, despite multiple attempts, he says firefighters had to carry him out of One Liberty Plaza, also known as the U.S. Steel Building, because they thought it was about to collapse.
As CNN fact checker Daniel Dale notes, there’s no evidence Trump went into this building, especially at a time when NYPD and NYFD had locked down the area. There’s no evidence that building was collapsing — in fact, it was deemed structurally sound and reopened within two months of the attacks. There’s no evidence he was carried out of it by firefighters.
But the lie isn’t even the worst part. Pretend it was all true — why would the leader of our country, and a New Yorker, decide to make that tragic day about himself?
Because that’s who Donald Trump is. He’s a malignant narcissist.
He’s also, incidentally, a terrible and ineffectual president, who’s made ill-fated decisions that he has to keep defending, and there’s nothing he won’t do to make himself look and feel better.
Within the first two minutes of his speech, he was cravenly using 9/11 to justify and promote his dumb war in Iran — two events separated by 25 years and 6,000 miles.
“And I will tell you, we’re right now fighting because we have a certain nation that wanted a nuclear weapon, they were very close to getting it, and now they have no chance at getting it. They will never have a nuclear weapon. Iran will not have a nuclear weapon. And they’ve been punished greatly. As you know, we’ve really taken it to them.”
As a New Yorker who lived through 9/11, still one of the worst days of my life, I’m utterly sickened by Trump’s crass, political, and self-promotional framing of that awful day.
And I’m relieved he won’t be given a platform to do it again on Friday’s anniversary in lower Manhattan.
Because for Trump, everything is his for the taking, and absolutely nothing is sacred.
S.E. Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.