Nearly every high-level Washington meeting, star-studded conference and story about AI centers on one epic question: Can this awesome new power be constrained?

• It cannot, experts repeatedly and emphatically told Axios' Jim VandeHei and Mike Allen.

Why it matters: Lots of people want to roll artificial intelligence out slowly, use it ethically, regulate it wisely. But everyone gets the joke: It defies all human logic and experience to think ethics will trump profit, power, prestige. Never has. Never will.

• AI pioneer Mustafa Suleyman — co-founder and CEO of Inflection AI, and co-founder of AI giant DeepMind, now part of Google — sounds the alarm in his new book "The Coming Wave," with the sobering Chapter 1: "Containment Is Not Possible."

That's why Sam Altman getting sacked — suddenly and shockingly — should grab your attention. OpenAI — creator of the most popular generative AI tool, ChatGPT — became a battlefield between ethical true believers, who control the board, and the profit-and-progress activators like Altman who ran the company.

• Altman was quickly scooped up by Microsoft, OpenAI's main sugar daddy, to move faster with a "new advanced AI research team."
• Open AI's interim CEO is a doom-fearing advocate for slowing the AI race — Twitch co-founder Emmett Shear, who recently warned there's a 5% to 50% chance this new tech ends humanity.

What we're hearing: Few in Silicon Valley think the Shears of the world will win this battle. The dynamics they're battling are too powerful:

1. Competition between technologists and technology companies to create something with superhuman power inevitably leads to speed and high risk. It's why free competition exists and works.
2. Even if individuals and companies magically showed never-before-seen restraint and humility, competitive governments and nations won't. China will force us to throw caution to the wind: The only thing worse than superhuman power in our hands is it being in China's ... or Iran's ... or Russia's.
3. Even if other nations stumbled and America's innovators paused, there are still open-source models that bad actors could exploit.

Read the full column.

A deal between Israel and Hamas to free dozens of hostages and declare a multi-day ceasefire is imminent and could be announced by the Qatari mediators as soon as today, two sources tell Axios' Barak Ravid.

• Why it matters: If the deal materializes, it'll be the biggest diplomatic breakthrough since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack.

As part of the deal, Israel would release three Palestinian prisoners held in Israel for each Israeli hostage released by Hamas.

• In the first phase of the two-phase deal, Hamas is expected to release 50 Israeli women and children held in Gaza, while Israel is expected to release around 150 Palestinian prisoners, mostly women and minors.
• The release of hostages and prisoners in the first phase of the deal would take place over four days of ceasefire in Gaza.
• Israel would also allow around 300 aid trucks per day to enter Gaza from Egypt.

In a second phase, Hamas could release up to another 50 Israeli hostages — women, children and elderly people — in return for extending the ceasefire by several more days.

• Share this story.

Roughly 745 of OpenAI's approximately 770 employees have signed an open letter saying they would leave OpenAI and join Microsoft unless the board resigns "imminently."

• Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said late Sunday night that ousted OpenAI CEO Sam Altman would join Microsoft to head a new AI research unit.
• Microsoft, which invested $13 billion in Open AI, lifted the stock market yesterday after what a Fortune headline called Nadella's "poker move for the ages."

Nadella made clear in interviews with CNBC and Bloomberg that Microsoft wants changes in OpenAI's board and structure no matter what, Axios chief tech correspondent Ina Fried reports.

• "We definitely would want some governance changes. Surprises are bad," he told Bloomberg TV.

Rival tech companies have begun making overtures to poach OpenAI talent, both privately to individuals and publicly to the whole workforce.

• Some, like Google AI executive Jeff Dean, made subtle gestures. Others, including Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff, made their outreach blunt.
• "Salesforce will match any OpenAI researcher who has tendered their resignation full cash & equity OTE to immediately join our Salesforce Einstein Trusted AI research team under Silvio Savarese," Benioff posted.

Between the lines: OpenAI employees appear to be mostly unified in support of Altman and Greg Brockman, the company's former board chair and president, who quit on Friday.

• "This is a super generous offer! ... But we're with @sama @miramurati and @gdb to the end," replied OpenAI researcher Tony Wu.

🔎 The intrigue: OpenAI's board approached Dario Amodei — who left OpenAI to become co-founder and CEO of rival Anthropic — about a potential merger or even succeeding Altman as CEO.

• Amodei rejected both, The Information reports.

Share this story ... Go deeper: Profile of Emmett Shear, OpenAI's new interim CEO.

Tomorrow is the 60th anniversary of the death of President John F. Kennedy. Axios' Russell Contreras has been researching JFK's relationship with Latinos for years:

JFK and first lady Jacqueline Kennedy were only supposed to drop by and say hi during a Nov. 21, 1963, gathering of Mexican American activists in Houston.

• Instead, the couple spent 17 minutes delivering speeches and enjoying music at a gala hosted by the League of United Latin American Citizens, then the largest Latino civil rights organization.

Why it matters: The historic meeting, 60 years ago today, was overshadowed by Kennedy's assassination the next day in Dallas. Yet historians believe it was the first time a sitting president publicly recognized the Latino vote.

• The anniversary comes as Democrats and Republicans vie for Latino voters, who have been starting to vote more for conservative politicians.

Context: Latinos in the 1960s were a voting bloc many national politicians ignored. Kennedy was the first to see its potential to sway national elections.

• Jacqueline Kennedy recorded the nation's first Spanish-language national campaign ad targeting Latino voters. John Kennedy mentioned Mexican Americans and Puerto Ricans in his opening statement in the nation's first televised presidential debate.

🗳️ Kennedy won 85% to 90% of the Latino vote in 1960, thanks to an aggressive campaign by Viva Kennedy! clubs and excitement over electing the nation's first Catholic president.

• He beat Republican Richard Nixon by a razor-thin margin of less than two-tenths of one percentage point (0.17%). Kennedy's brother, Robert, would later say Mexican American voters were crucial to the slim victory.

Keep reading ... More photos: JFK's legacy with Latinos and Latin America, 60 years later.

• Subscribe to Axios Latino to get vital news about Latinos and Latin America in your inbox twice weekly.

Corporate America roared back into growth mode last quarter.

• Why it matters: Better-than-expected numbers from third-quarter earnings season — which unofficially ended with Walmart's results last Thursday — helped lift stocks sharply this month, Axios' Matt Phillips writes.

Context: Leading up to Q3 earnings season, analysts had been focusing on the so-called earnings recession — unofficially defined as two consecutive quarters of shrinking profits — as a potential concern for the market.

• S&P 500 companies had seen shrinking profits in the fourth quarter of 2022, and the first two quarters this year.
• That string came to an end in Q3.

State of play: Reinforcing the narrative of the resilient American shopper, consumer discretionary companies did a lot better than expected, seeing their per share profits rise by more than 40%, according to FactSet.

• Energy companies — which face tough comparisons to last year, when insanely high oil and gas prices delivered windfall profits — brought up the rear. Their profits dropped by more than one-third, FactSet data said, though industry profits are still strong, historically speaking.

Get Axios Markets.

These signs welcomed L.A. drivers back to the 10 Freeway several weeks ahead of original projections. Arson had ignited a pallet fire below the span eight days earlier. 300,000 vehicles use the corridor each day. (L.A. Times)

Student absences have increased across the country at an alarming rate, Axios' April Rubin writes from new data from Attendance Works, a nonprofit research initiative.

• Nearly 30% of students (14.7 million) were chronically absent during the 2021-22 school year, meaning they missed 10% or more of the year.

Why it matters: Students haven't recovered from pandemic-era learning losses. Widespread, chronic absences affect entire schools, not just the missing students.

• Share this story.

Mariah Carey might not be the queen of the holiday charts after all.

• Carey's ubiquitous "All I Want for Christmas is You" is only the second most-played Christmas hit, trailing Brenda Lee's "Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree," Axios' Dave Lawler writes from Spotify data.

Between the lines: Billboard's rankings involve multiple metrics, including radio plays and streaming data. The latest chart is led by Taylor Swift and doesn't include any Christmas songs.

• But at least on Spotify, it's Lee who has been lighting up the charts.
• "Rockin' Around" currently sits at No. 7 on Spotify's daily list of the most-played songs in the U.S., ahead of "All I Want" at No. 12.
• On Christmas Day for each of the last three years, on Spotify at least, more Americans have listened to Lee describing "everyone dancing merrily in the new old-fashioned way" than Carey declaring what she really wants for Christmas.

🎅 To the chagrin of the "not until after Thanksgiving" crowd, Spotify's top-50 list is already heavy on holiday hits.

• Bing Crosby's "White Christmas" (No. 16), Bobby Helms' "Jingle Bell Rock" (No. 20), Wham's "Last Christmas" (No. 25), Dean Martin's "Let it Snow" (No. 40) and Michael Bublé's "It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas" (No. 41) all cracked the top 50 as of yesterday.

Share this story.