Exclusive survey finds negative economic impacts felt across party lines as White House doubles down on tariffs
Seven in 10 Americans say Donald Trump’s tariffs have led to them paying higher prices, according to an exclusive new poll for the Guardian.
The Harris Poll survey presents Republicans with a major problem in the battle for the upcoming midterm elections. The majority of all voters (72%) believe Trump’s tariffs have had a negative rather than a positive impact and 67% said tariffs aren’t the right solution for improving the economy.
64% of Republicans agreed that Trump’s tariffs had led to higher prices compared with 77% of Democrats and 67% of independents who believed the same.
60% of Republicans also said that tariffs had had more of a negative impact on consumers than a positive one, compared with 81% of Democrats and 75% of independents.
Continue reading...Saturday quiz | Avoiding AI | Size matters
It was lovely to read Sabrina Olson’s letter (6 March) on the quiz as it has been a family ritual for us for years. It kept us all connected through our children’s time at university, then moving into their own homes, and in some cases working abroad. It kept us going through the enforced separation of Covid and became a rite of passage for any new partners who joined our family group, especially as our winner is expected to do a “creative” dance of victory. Two lovely daughters-in-law are now regular quizzers.
Angela Barker
Rottingdean, East Sussex
• I have found that chatbots are easily circumvented when, asking to state the problem, I write or spout gibberish (The AI assistant was offering me any help I needed. All I wanted was a living, breathing human, 11 March). It seems to be the fastest way to be put in contact with a human being.
Dr Peter Glanvill
Chard, Somerset
Two weeks in, it’s increasingly clear that the US-led war has taken every problem it aimed to solve – and made it worse
It’s not easy, but let’s try to look at this war in the best, most charitable light. Let’s try to see the US-Israel conflict with Iran as its prosecutors and advocates would want us to see it.
They would say that it has two aims, both legitimate. The first is to weaken if not remove a regime that has done terrible evil to its own people. Who could mourn the supreme leader of a government that, according to one report, gunned down 30,000 of its citizens on the streets in just two days on 8 and 9 January? Listen to those Iranians who long ago reached the glum conclusion that the only way they could be rid of their tormentors was through external military action. As one exiled Iranian put it to me this week: “The Iranian people have been begging the world for help for so many years. They tried voting for change in 2009; they were killed. They tried protesting in 2019, 2022 and this year; they were massacred in the tens of thousands … They were out of all other options.”
Jonathan Freedland is a Guardian columnist
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US defense head is eager to frame operation as a success – and slam journalists for not portraying it in a positive light
Pete Hegseth on Friday again claimed the US military campaign against Iran has been an unprecedented success, using a Pentagon press conference to accuse journalists of downplaying Washington’s supposed gains on the battlefield.
Speaking alongside the chair of the joint chiefs of staff, the US defense secretary claimed Iran had been left without a functioning air force, navy or missile defense network after 13 days of strikes, and said the combined US-Israeli air campaign had hit more than 15,000 targets since the war began.
Continue reading...Meta and Apple have zeroed in on mixed reality headsets and augments as their next frontier. But allowing wearables to collect data about their surroundings is going to cause problems.
Regimes in China and Russia are rushing to repress what chatbots can say. It's an early warning about a new frontier of online censorship.
From the astrology software of the 1970s to the Co-Star app, spirituality has proliferated online. Now, large language models can find overlooked ways to connect with a higher plane.
WIRED’s spiritual advice columnist on the lure of augmented reality and what may get left behind here on earth.
Tech and the liberal arts have always been at war. Don’t assume Silicon Valley will win.
The tech economy is all about getting those next 10,000 users. What if it maximized something else for a change?
In the race to scale up, the number of AIs being trained on poor-quality data sets has swelled—and it’s going to amplify all kinds of inequities.