The people building AI are saying — subtly and unsubtly — that the technology is advancing more rapidly than most people realize, Axios' Erica Pandey writes.

• Why it matters: It's likely we won't know how, and how much, AI will change the way we live, work and play ... until it already has.

"The internet was a minor breeze compared to the huge storms that will hit us," says Anton Korinek, an economist at the University of Virginia. "If this technology develops at the pace the lab leaders are predicting, we are utterly unprepared."

🔎 Zoom in: Pay attention to what the people closest to the technology are saying.

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman wrote in a blog post last month that the "2030s are likely going to be wildly different from any time that has come before. We do not know how far beyond human-level intelligence we can go, but we are about to find out."
• Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, told Axios that AI could wipe out half of entry-level white-collar jobs in the next one to five years.
• Geoffrey Hinton, one of the "godfathers of AI," told BBC Radio 4 the technology is moving "very, very fast, much faster than I expected."

Case in point: Take ChatGPT. It took five days after launch for the chatbot to hit 1 million users.

• It took Facebook 10 months to get to 1 million users, and it took Twitter two years to hit the same milestone.

There are already signs that change is coming fast. CEOs are starting to say "the quiet part out loud" when it comes to how AI will hit employment.

• Amazon CEO Andy Jassy told employees he expects the tech giant's workforce to shrink.
• Ford CEO Jim Farley said at this year's Aspen Ideas Festival, "Artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S."
• Shopify CEO Tobi Lutke told employees that before requesting to open a new role for hiring, they must first prove that the job cannot be done using AI.

🥊 Reality check: The prediction that AI will upend society is still just a prediction. Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist and another "godfather of AI," posted on X: "A house cat has way more common sense and understanding of the world than any LLM."

• Still, even if AI froze in place right now — impossible — its capabilities are already advanced enough to shake up our jobs and lives.

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A growing number of U.S. citizens — many of them Latinos — are reporting they were detained for various periods by immigration agents in what critics say were instances of racial profiling and overzealous policing, Axios' Russell Contreras writes.

• Why it matters: U.S. citizens aren't supposed to be arrested or detained unless agents allege they're breaking laws. But reports of citizens of Latino descent being detained — or stopped and asked to prove citizenship — are rippling through Latino communities nationwide.

ICE hasn't released statistics on such detentions in months. Tricia McLaughlin, a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson, told Axios that recent reports of citizens wrongly being arrested are false — and that "the media is shamefully peddling a false narrative" to demonize ICE agents.

• But an Axios review of news reports, social media videos and claims by advocacy groups about raids since President Trump took office found several instances in which U.S. citizens alleged they were wrongfully detained — in one case, for 10 days in immigration detention.

Zoom in: In May, ICE briefly detained Florida-born Leonardo Garcia Venegas from his job at a construction site in Foley, Ala. Agents alleged that Garcia's Real ID was fake, according to Noticias Telemundo.

• Immigration officials held U.S. citizen and Albuquerque resident Jose Hermosillo for 10 days in Arizona's Florence Correctional Center after arresting him, and didn't believe him when he said he was a citizen, Arizona Public Media reports.
• Last month, ICE briefly detained U.S. citizen Elzon Lemus, an electrician from Brentwood, N.Y., during a traffic stop after agents told Lemus he "looked like" someone they were looking for, CBS News reported.

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Two of Wall Street's biggest banks have very differing views of how the economy will develop this year, but they agree on one thing: Don't sweat tariffs. Just buy stocks.

• Why it matters: Both Goldman Sachs and Bank of America emphasize the resilience of corporations, regardless of tariff policy, Axios Markets author Madison Mills writes.

The big picture: BofA sees stagflation ahead — continued inflation with a side of slowing growth. But the bank makes the argument that even in the stagflationary 1970s, some sectors, such as large-cap value stocks, still outperformed handsomely.

• On the other hand, Goldman sees solid growth and cooling inflation that allows the Federal Reserve to cut rates deeper, earlier.

"The US isn't exceptional, but Corporate America might be," BofA's Savita Subramanian titled a note out yesterday.

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A survey out today finds many companies are already feeling tariff pain, Axios' Ben Berkowitz writes.

• Why it matters: Businesses can only eat trade costs for so long before raising prices, fueling the tariff-driven inflation many economists fear.

57% of companies were already experiencing a tariff-driven decline in gross margins as of May, according to a KPMG Tariff Pulse Survey of executives at 300 companies with annual revenue of $1 billion or more.

• A quarter of respondents said their margins had already fallen by 6% or more.

🔬 Zoom in: If higher prices haven't shown up for customers yet, the survey makes clear they're coming.

• 77% of respondents said their companies are considering price increases of at least 5% in the next six months.

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Elon Musk's AI platform Grok faced backlash yesterday for repeatedly using antisemitic language in its replies on X, Axios' Herb Scribner and Scott Rosenberg write.

• The big picture: Grok's posts featured violent depictions of sexual assault, as well as praise for Adolf Hitler (more than once) and white nationalist Nick Fuentes.

Musk said on Friday that the company had "improved Grok significantly" — his latest attempt to retrain it to answer prompts more to his liking.

• Instructions for the chatbot, published by xAI, said that its responses "should not shy away from making claims which are politically incorrect." Those instructions were removed last night.

🔭 Zoom out: Grok will no doubt keep getting tweaks and revisions that might mitigate its most outrageous posts, but the larger problem is one Musk has intentionally chosen to create.

• After purchasing Twitter, now X, he changed policies to tolerate a wide range of extremist views, including open avowals of Nazi allegiance and other forms of hate speech.
• Then Musk trained his new AI model, Grok, on X's content. The resulting chatbot is just reflecting X's atmosphere back at us.

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The Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to conduct mass layoffs of federal workers yesterday, Axios' Sareen Habeshian writes.

• Why it matters: The decision, which lifts a federal judge's earlier order freezing the cuts, gives the administration power to resume its goal of reshaping and scaling back federal agencies.

The unsigned order could lead to tens of thousands of people losing their jobs, including at State and Treasury.

• The decision stems from an executive order Trump signed in February that directs federal agencies to work with DOGE to make "large-scale" workforce reductions.

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Secretary of State Marco Rubio's voice was mimicked in a string of artificial-intelligence-powered impersonation attempts, The Washington Post first reported (gift link).

• Why it matters: Threats from bad actors harnessing voice-cloning technology are rapidly expanding beyond typical "grandparent scams" to target or impersonate high-profile government officials, Axios' Avery Lotz and Sam Sabin write.

☎️ State of play: U.S. authorities don't know who is behind the campaign, in which an imposter claiming to be Rubio reportedly contacted three foreign ministers, a member of Congress and a governor.

• The scam used a Signal account with the display name "[email protected]."

The hoax follows a May FBI warning about a text and voice messaging campaign to impersonate senior U.S. officials.

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A mischievous little monster with fangs is America's must-have toy — causing fans of all ages to line up and resale prices to soar, Axios' Kelly Tyko writes.

• Meet Labubu, the spiky-eared collectible from China and star of the "cute horror" boom.

Why it matters: "Trends can go global so much easier now," Coresight Research CEO Deborah Weinswig tells Axios. "It's like the Cabbage Patch Kids of yesteryear."

• The elf-like character created by a Hong Kong artist is sold in "blind boxes," meaning buyers don't know which figure they'll get, fueling a thrill-of-the-hunt resale culture.

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