Pictured above (left to right): Mark Zuckerberg (Meta), Lisa Su (AMD), Elon Musk (xAI), Jensen Huang (Nvidia), Sam Altman (OpenAI), Demis Hassabis (DeepMind Technologies), Dario Amodei (Anthropic), Fei-Fei Li (World Labs). Painting by Jason Seiler for TIME.

Artificial intelligence is accelerating faster than any other technology in history and is doing so in a dramatic fashion. Centered in the US, with tight competitors in China and a few others around the world, major technology labs are racing to develop the most powerful AI systems ever created. This competition, often referred to as the “AI Race,” includes companies such as OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Meta, xAi, and DeepSeek. Each one is putting historic amounts of capital, time, and resources into building more capable machines.

AI has existed for many decades, but over the past two years, the tools have improved dramatically. These models can write code, generate images and videos, and optimize research for all fields. The speed at which these tasks are being executed is being cut back as the cost of performing them is as well. Due to this rapid progress, these companies are pouring billions of dollars into building stronger models and infrastructure, such as data centers, to run them.

This race has expanded well beyond making better chatbots to solve many of the world’s largest problems. AI has the potential to reshape industries like medicine, education, engineering, transportation, and entertainment. For example, specific AI models can improve research into curing a disease while also being much more accurate at diagnosing it than an experienced doctor. Whoever can take the lead in developing these capabilities will gain serious economic power.

While this all seems new and exciting, the competition does raise serious concerns. Powerful AI systems have the potential to replace millions of jobs, possibly spread misinformation, and create realistic fake images or videos. That is why it is critical that rules and regulations be developed to support user safety.

As we continue to see the events unfolding in real time, no one knows who could be in the lead tomorrow. All we know is that the technology will evolve, and the best way to take advantage of it is to understand it. The worst thing one could do is be “AI incompetent.”

Kevin Warsh, President Trump’s Fed Chairman nominee. Photo: CBC News

Two weeks ago, President Trump nominated Kevin Warsh as the next Chair of the United States Federal Reserve. To anyone outside government, finance, or economics, this is a powerful role that is out of the spotlight. It is one of the most influential economic positions in the world as the United States serves as the world’s reserve currency. Due to this responsibility, decisions made by the Fed affect people, institutions, and countries around the world.

The Federal Reserve is the central bank of the United States. As the most important bank, it operates very differently from a normal bank. It does not provide daily transactional banking for individuals; rather, it manages the country’s financial system by setting interest rates that influence how much money can be borrowed.

The Federal Reserve building. Photo: Investopedia.

You may be wondering why this is important, but it is critical to understand because it plays a major role in everyday life. The Fed’s decisions affect things like student loans, car loans, mortgages, and savings accounts. Their two biggest goals are to maintain stable prices and maximize employment. All decisions are made in an effort to achieve both goals.

So, who is Kevin Warsh, the newly nominated chairman? Warsh is an economist and a former investment banker at Morgan Stanley. He previously served on the Federal Reserve’s Board of Governors from 2006 to 2011 and helped guide the US out of the 2008 financial crisis. This experience will now help him lead the Fed and guide decisions on interest rates and economic policy.

It is expected that Warsh will take over in May 2026, when the current chair, Jerome Powell’s, term expires. While this may seem irrelevant to our day-to-day lives, the Fed’s decisions affect all of us. The cost of borrowing money and prices paid at the store both depend on the Fed. That is why the nomination of the newest Fed chair, Kevin Warsh, is an important event worth paying attention to and understanding.

Photo by Jacob Slagel ’26.

NASA’s Artemis program is NASA’s plan to send astronauts back to the moon and use what they learn there to prepare for future missions deeper into space. On NASA’s Artemis II mission page, NASA states that the mission is planned as a crewed lunar flyby, with four astronauts orbiting the Moon for approximately 10 days, using the Space Launch System rocket and the Orion spacecraft. The page also lists the launch timing as no earlier than March 2026.

NASA has been running major tests ahead of the mission. In a Feb. 3 update on NASA’s missions blog, NASA said it completed a wet dress rehearsal, a full-fueling test meant to catch problems before launch. In the same set of updates, NASA reported that the test countdown was halted due to a liquid hydrogen leak, and teams worked to save the vehicle and drain the tanks.

Even with a program as large as Artemis, not every student is following the details closely. Cooper Plotts ’26 said he had not heard about the Artemis program before this week. After learning that NASA is preparing to send astronauts back toward the moon, Plotts said it sounds like a rare experience for the crew. “It’d be a pretty cool experience for them to be able to go back up and experience it,” he said.

Photo by Jacob Slagel ’26.

Plotts said the return to the moon feels exciting, even if it is not something he hears about every day. “It feels exciting but also distant,” he said. Still, Plotts said space exploration matters because there is much humans do not yet know. “There’s still so much we don’t know,” he said.

Plotts also has a personal connection to launches from growing up in Florida. He visited Kennedy Space Center on an elementary school field trip and saw a rocket launch that same day. Plotts described how the rocket seemed to move slowly at first, then looked faster as it rose through clouds and disappeared from view. “That was a really cool experience,” he said.

NASA describes Artemis as a long-term exploration campaign focused on returning to the moon for science and technology development while building experience for future missions to Mars, according to NASA’s main Artemis overview page. For Plotts, learning about Artemis made future launches feel more worth following, especially because launches can sometimes be visible from far away in Florida.