Picture this: A congressional hearing on “AI policy” makes the evening news. A senator gravely asks whether artificial intelligence might one day “wake up” and take over the world. Cameras flash. Headlines declare: “Lawmakers Confront the Coming Robot Threat.”

Meanwhile, outside the Beltway on main streets across the country, everyday Americans worry about whether AI tools will replace them on factory floors, in call centers, or even in classrooms. Those bread-and-butter concerns — job displacement, worker retraining, and community instability — deserve placement at the top of the agenda for policymakers. Yet legislatures too often get distracted, following academic debates that may intrigue scholars but fail to address the challenges that most directly affect people’s lives.

That misalignment is no coincidence. Academic discourse does not merely fill journals; it actively shapes the policy agenda and popular conceptions of AI. Too many scholars dwell on speculative, even trivial, hypotheticals. They debate whether large language models should be treated as co-authors on scientific papers or whether AI could ever develop consciousness.

These conversations filter into the media, morph into lawmaker talking points, and eventually dominate legislative hearings. The result is a political environment where sci-fi scenarios crowd out the issues most relevant to ordinary people — like how to safeguard workers, encourage innovation, and ensure fairness in critical industries. When lawmakers turn to scholars for guidance, they often encounter lofty speculation rather than clear-eyed analysis of how AI is already reshaping specific sectors.

The consequences are predictable. Legislatures either do nothing — paralyzed by the enormousness of “AI” as a category — or they pass laws so broad as to be meaningless. A favorite move at the state level has been to declare, in effect, that “using AI to commit an illegal act is illegal.” Laws penalizing the use of AI to do already illegal things give the appearance of legislative activity but do little to further the public interest. That approach may win headlines and votes, but it hardly addresses the real disruption workers and businesses face.

Part of the problem is definitional. “AI” is treated as if it were a single, coherent entity, when in reality it encompasses a spectrum — from narrow, task-specific tools to general-purpose models used across industries. Lumping all of this under one heading creates confusion.

Should the same rules apply to a start-up using machine learning to improve crop yields and to a tech giant rolling out a massive generative model? Should we regulate a medical imaging tool the same way we regulate a chatbot? The broader the category, the harder it becomes to write rules that are both effective and proportionate.

This definitional sprawl plays into the hands of entrenched players. Large, well-capitalized companies can afford to comply with sweeping “AI regulations” and even lobby to shape them in their favor. Smaller upstarts — which might otherwise deliver disruptive innovations — are less able to bear compliance costs. Overly broad laws risk cementing incumbents’ dominance while stifling competition and experimentation.

Academia’s misdirected focus amplifies these legislative errors. By devoting disproportionate attention to speculative harms, scholars leave a vacuum on the issues that lawmakers urgently need guidance on: workforce transitions, liability in high-risk contexts, and the uneven distribution of benefits across communities. In turn, legislators craft rules based on vibes and headlines rather than hard evidence. The cycle perpetuates popular misunderstandings about AI as a mystical, autonomous force rather than what it really is: advanced computation deployed in diverse and practical ways.

Breaking this cycle requires a shift in academic priorities. Law schools and policy institutes should be producing rigorous, sector-specific research that maps how AI is actually used in hiring, logistics, healthcare, and education. They should be equipping students — not just with critical theory about technology but with practical tools to analyze which harms are novel, which are familiar, and which are overstated. And they should reward faculty who bring that analysis into legislative conversations, even if it means fewer citations in traditional journals and more engagement with policymakers.

For legislators, the lesson is equally clear: resist the temptation to legislate against “AI” in the abstract. Instead, focus on use cases, industries, and contexts. Ask whether existing laws on consumer protection, labor, and competition already cover the concern. And when crafting new rules, ensure they are narrow enough to avoid sweeping in both the start-up and the superpower indiscriminately.

If academics can resist the pull of speculative debates, and if legislators can resist the urge to regulate AI as a monolith, we might finally bring policy into alignment with reality. The public deserves a debate focused less on worst-case scenarios and more on the practical realities of how today’s tools are already shaping daily life. That is where the real challenges — and the real opportunities — lie.

Kevin Frazier is an AI Innovation and Law Fellow at Texas Law and author of the Appleseed AI substack. He wrote this column for The Fulcrum, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news platform covering efforts to fix our governing systems.

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Vegetable-loving cooks can make ratatouille all summer long, from the first moment that peppers, zucchini, eggplant and tomatoes get glossy and ripe. But I think early autumn is when the dish truly shines.

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Marinated pork tenderloin stars in this budget weeknight meal

It’s partly context. When the evenings turn chilly, tucking into a warm bowl of soft, stewy late-season produce is inherently comforting. And since I roast my ratatouille instead of simmering it on the stove, early fall is maybe the first time since late spring when keeping the oven on for an hour is a pleasure, rather than an ordeal.

Roasted ratatouille is both less work and better tasting than the traditional method. For one thing, you don’t need to stand at the stove stirring a pot all afternoon. And spreading the vegetables out on a sheet-pan gives them the space they need to caramelize all over and develop the concentrated, almost smoky flavor that only proper browning imparts.

The key to a really good sheet-pan ratatouille is nailing both the timing and the texture. The eggplant, zucchini and peppers need to fully brown without charring. Blasting them with high heat gives them color, then dialing back the temperature lets them continue their transformation slowly and evenly. You’re not aiming for merely tender here: These vegetables should collapse into one another, melding into a glorious soft heap. (In my house, we refer to ratatouille as “mushy veg,” which we mean in the very best way.)

Using generous amounts of olive oil aids the cause, turning the vegetables confit-like. And one last crucial strategy is adding the tomatoes partway through roasting. This gives them plenty of time to burst and release their sweet juice, but not enough to evaporate it.

This weeknight version is scaled down from the party-size ratatouille recipes I’ve written in the past. Fewer vegetables create less knife work, and everything fits snugly on one pan to serve three or four people.

While the ratatouille roasts, I use the oven’s other rack to crisp up some canned, spiced chickpeas. Strewn on top of the almost custardy vegetables, they add a snappy crunch, along with protein and heft.

In summer, I often serve ratatouille with a torn hunk of baguette and a glass of ice-cold rosé. But as the weather cools, I swap out the rosé for a light-bodied red. This hearty ratatouille dinner is primed for sweater weather.

Sheet-Pan Ratatouille With Crispy Chickpeas

This colorful, vegetable-filled dish has all the flavors of ratatouille but requires a lot less work to get there. Instead of standing at the stove to cook the eggplant, zucchini, tomatoes and peppers individually, they’re roasted all together on a sheet pan until they caramelize and collapse, turning silky and sweet. Spiced chickpeas are added to the oven halfway through cooking, giving them a chance to crisp up. Sprinkled onto the vegetables just before serving, they add protein and a delightful crunch.

By Melissa Clark

Yield: 3 to 4 servings

Total time: 1 hour, 40 minutes

INGREDIENTS

2 (15 1/2-ounce) cans chickpeas, drained and rinsed
3/4 pound zucchini, cut into 3/4-inch chunks (about 3 cups)
3/4 pound eggplant, cut into 3/4-inch chunks (3 1/2 cups)
1 large red, orange or yellow bell pepper, seeded and sliced 1/4-inch thick
4 garlic cloves, smashed and peeled
1/2 cup extra-virgin olive oil, divided, plus more for drizzling
1 teaspoon fine sea salt, plus more for sprinkling
2 cups cherry tomatoes, halved
4 thyme or rosemary sprigs (or a mix)
1 medium red onion, thinly sliced
1/2 teaspoon cumin seeds
1/2 teaspoon fennel seeds (or use more cumin)
1/4 teaspoon ground cayenne or hot smoked paprika
Torn basil leaves (or other soft herbs, such as chives, parsley or mint) and lemon wedges, for serving

DIRECTIONS

1. Arrange racks in the top and bottom thirds of the oven and heat to 425 degrees. Spread chickpeas on a clean kitchen towel or paper towels, patting them dry, then let air dry while you prepare the vegetables. The drier they are, the crispier they will get.

2. On a rimmed baking sheet, toss together the zucchini, eggplant, pepper, garlic, 5 tablespoons olive oil and 1/2 teaspoon salt, and spread everything in a single layer. Roast on the bottom rack for 30 minutes, stirring halfway through.

3. Stir tomatoes and herb sprigs into the vegetables. Scatter onion slices on top, drizzle everything with a little more oil and sprinkle with a little more salt. Roast for 10 minutes.

4. Meanwhile, spread chickpeas on another rimmed sheet pan and toss with remaining 3 tablespoons oil, the cumin and fennel seeds, cayenne, and remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt.

5. Give the vegetables a stir. Reduce oven temperature to 375 degrees.

6. Put chickpeas on the top oven rack. Continue to roast, stirring the vegetables once or twice, and shaking the pan with the chickpeas, until vegetables are tender, chickpeas are crisp and everything is golden, 30 to 40 minutes.

7. Serve ratatouille topped with chickpeas, basil leaves or lemon wedges for squeezing.

Never had so many admirals and generals been summoned from Europe, Asia and the Middle East to a single military base. Because such a gathering has no apparent modern precedent, you would think that the event Tuesday in Quantico, Virginia, was for a good reason. But that wasn’t the case.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s decision to fly in more than 800 of the United States’ most senior military officers to sit through two hours of banal, rambling speeches reflects how far the Pentagon has come in eight months of this administration, becoming subject to President Donald Trump’s politics and the idea that troops should be used at home.

The military was once again used as a backdrop for Trump’s ongoing clashes in America’s culture wars. What played out was largely a political-rally performance in front of service members who, by rule, aren’t allowed to engage in partisan activities.

Instead of hearing about a key strategic military shift or department restructuring, Hegseth informed them about the administration’s plans to tighten fitness and grooming standards, before Trump delivered an hour’s worth of gripes and ruminations on political life that included taking potshots at his immediate predecessor.

Appearing in front of a large American flag display, Patton-style, Trump was surprised when the military officers greeted him with silence rather than uproarious applause. “I never walked into a room so silent before,” he said. “Don’t laugh. Don’t laugh. You’re not allowed to do that. Just have a good time. And if you want to applaud, you applaud. And if you want to do anything you want, you can do anything that you want. And if you don’t like what I’m saying, you can leave the room. Of course, there goes your rank. There goes your future. But you just feel nice and loose, OK, because we’re all on the same team.”

It was delivered as a joke — one of many the president made that drew uncomfortable laughter over the course of his address — but Trump has pressure-tested the military’s apolitical posture. He did it this year in a speech to troops at Fort Bragg in North Carolina, and he did it repeatedly Tuesday.

He criticized President Joe Biden, taking an unusual swipe at a former commander in chief in front of U.S. forces. He doubled down on rancor when he claimed the United States faced “a war from within.” Cities led by “radical left Democrats,” he said, are unsafe places. “We’re going to straighten them out one by one,” he said. “And this is going to be a major part for some of the people in this room. That’s a war, too.”

Trump’s inclination to use military forces in blue parts of the country has quickly become a defining characteristic of his second term. Rather than the usual practice of deploying U.S. forces into communities confronting an emergency or natural disaster, Trump sees them as a means to establish law and order. He’s already sent the National Guard into Los Angeles and Washington, D.C., and on Tuesday he suggested they were going into Chicago “very soon.”

These U.S. cities, he said, should be used as “training grounds” for the troops.

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In his address, Hegseth criticized the “stupid rules of engagement,” that he claimed constrained soldiers in combat. This could mean that military lawyers are reevaluating what actions are permissible on the battlefield, but he stopped short of detailing what changes were occurring.

It’s hard to believe, given that his speech ran nearly an hour, but outside of suggestions along these lines, there might not have been a single new piece of information that was relayed to the hundreds of officers compelled to attend the meeting, the total cost of which will probably never be publicly disclosed.

Instead, Hegseth spoke at length about the urgent need for U.S. service members to maintain clean-shaven faces, conduct daily workouts and execute physical fitness tests twice a year.

“Unfortunately, we have had leaders who either refused to call BS and enforce standards or leaders who felt like they were not allowed to enforce standards,” he said. “Both are unacceptable. And that’s why today, at my direction, the era of unprofessional appearance is over. No more beardos. The era of rampant and ridiculous shaving profiles is done.”

He described how he was fed up with “fat troops” and “fat generals and admirals.” Equally important, he continued, was the elimination of political correctness and “woke garbage” within the ranks. Hegseth punctuated this point by defending his decision to fire more than a dozen military leaders, many of whom happen to be women or people of color.

While the senior officers managed to keep silent for much of this meeting, Trump is expected to continue to test the military’s nonpartisanship during future on-base appearances. Service members will be tested to hold true to its apolitical tradition — a responsibility that could be as consequential as any they might find while in uniform.

W.J. Hennigan writes for the New York Times.

There is no confusion as to the unprecedented scale of Taylor Swift’s pop superstardom now, and there hasn’t been for many years. Starting with her crossover breakout on “Red” in 2012, followed by her full anointment on “1989” two years later, she solidified her spot as American pop’s alpha figure on “Reputation,” the 2017 album in which she catalyzed tabloid fixation into some of the most radical music of her career. The Eras Tour, which ran for almost two years with a set list encompassing her whole career, cemented her global dominance.

But it wasn’t always this way. Swift’s beginnings as an unlikely country arriviste meant that her path to the top was winding and unlikely. There were bold musical risks, unanticipated speed bumps both creative and public, and a fiery resolve to triumph over any and all of those obstacles.

Her forthcoming album, “The Life of a Showgirl” (due Friday, Oct. 3), has been advertised as a return to Swift’s pure pop ambition, thanks to her reunion with Swedish writers and producers Max Martin and Shellback, responsible for some of her biggest hits.

The pop music team of The New York Times wrote about the first moments they understood Swift’s pop star destiny.

2009: The Fearless Tour

Taylor Swift performs onstage at a sold out concert at Madison Square Garden in New York, Aug. 27, 2009. Look back at six pivotal moments as the singer and songwriter prepares to release her 12th original studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl.” (Chad Batka/The New York Times)

When a 19-year-old Taylor Swift played Madison Square Garden in 2009 on her first-ever national tour, she was nominally a country singer. She had made two albums in and around Nashville, Tennessee, backed by guitars, banjo, fiddle and pedal steel. Extensive country radio airplay was the foundation of her crossover into the pop Top 10 with the hits “Love Story” and “You Belong With Me.” But Swift was singing about high school, not honky-tonks, and the country trappings barely contained songs that were constructed like crisp pop bangers, complete with Swift’s beloved bridges.

At Madison Square Garden, Swift leaned into a persona that often still serves her now — the wronged, vengeful and ever stronger ex-girlfriend — and she cranked up the guitars and the drama onstage. For the teenage girls soaking up every bit of big-sisterly advice and shouting along with the lyrics, she was absolutely a pop star already. — JON PARELES

2009: ‘You Belong With Me’ at the VMAs

FILE – In this Sept. 13, 2009 file photo, singer Kanye West takes the microphone from singer Taylor Swift as she accepts the “Best Female Video” award during the MTV Video Music Awards in New York. (AP Photo/Jason DeCrow, file)

What the world mostly remembers of this night is Swift’s collision with Ye, formerly Kanye West (four eternal words: “I’mma let you finish”), as she was accepting the best female video award for “You Belong With Me.” But her performance of that song earlier in the show — which began with a (staged) segment inside a New York City subway car, on Swift’s way to finish atop a yellow taxi parked outside Radio City Music Hall — was her intended statement, symbolically crashing the party in a perfect red dress. The night would end up a double blueprint for Swift’s career for years to come: big-tent pop ambition, intertwined with unending celebrity drama. — BEN SISARIO

2010: A First Foray Into US Weekly Pop: ‘Dear John’

John Mayer and Taylor Swift perform during Jingle Ball 2009 at Madison Square Garden in New York, Dec. 12, 2009. Look back at six pivotal moments as the singer and songwriter prepares to release her 12th original studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl.” (Rahav Segev/The New York Times)

Whatever did or did not happen between Swift and John Mayer in 2009 and 2010 is unknowable, and perhaps ultimately irrelevant. In the eyes of fervid fans and in the pages of tabloids, whatever smoke emanated from the two of them in the wake of their collaboration “Half of My Heart” was real fire.

Then came those two guitar figures at the beginning of “Dear John”: the first, a flat, plangent strum, followed by the second, an irritating, almost whining meow.

Simple — almost innocent — but undeniably a declaration of war.

“Dear John,” from Swift’s third album, “Speak Now,” is a Mayeresque takedown of Mayer. (Allegedly.) It is snide, and also hilarious, and also freakishly sad. Drowsy but sly, it’s an almost seven-minute dissection that animatedly and precisely channels the soporific blues-pop that Mayer had perfected on albums like “Continuum” and “Battle Studies.” Using her purported tormentor’s tools against him, and demonstrating her own casual mastery of a style not her own, Swift robbed him of his power. It’s a savage song — one of her most searing — and one of the great kiss-offs in pop music history.

By that point, only a few years into her career, Swift had found herself the subject of gossip attention, but “Dear John” was her first true foray into US Weekly pop, making a song fully formed by the heat of the spotlight, and designed to be served right back into it.

Her ascent continued unimpeded, but the song marked a shift in Mayer’s public life. In 2012, he told Rolling Stone he was “humiliated” by his portrayal in it, and suggested Swift had bullied him with her prodigious songwriting gift: “How would you feel if, at the lowest you’ve ever been, someone kicked you even lower?” — JON CARAMANICA

2010: The ‘Mine’ Pop Mix

Before the Taylor’s Version alternates, there were the pop mixes. And after “Love Story,” the first single from “Fearless” in 2008, there was no going back. As a country-pop crossover smash, the song became the first in history to go No. 1 on both genres’ radio formats; not that it needed it, but there was even a dumbed-down reproduction — “Love Story (Pop Mix)” — with its instrumentation simplified and digitized. (Swift’s label at the time, Big Machine, had tried something similar with “Teardrops on My Guitar,” from her self-titled debut, but there was no hiding that twang then.) “Love Story” hit No. 4 on the Billboard Hot 100, and “You Belong With Me” would go on to peak two spots higher.

So when it came time to follow up her mainstream breakout, Swift’s omnidirectional savvy showed me where things were headed. As an album, “Speak Now” in 2010 was a pit stop on the road to the full-scale ambitions of “Red” and “1989,” meant to shore up her diaristic credibility in the face of those questioning her pen, with no collaborative songwriters to be found in the liner notes across 14 tracks. But its lead single, “Mine,” a spiritual sequel and underrated companion piece to “Love Story” — “you made a rebel of a careless man’s careful daughter” (!) — was having it both ways, with a pop mix of its own.

It works arguably better than those before, the strums and plucks of producer Nathan Chapman’s guitars sped up and smoothed out, his banjo excised entirely. But genre limitations all of a sudden felt beside the point. Swift performed the song on “Dancing With the Stars,” it reached No. 3 on the Hot 100 and “Speak Now” sold more than 1 million copies in its first week, nearly double that of its predecessor. From then on, the pop mix would prove superfluous. — JOE COSCARELLI

2012: The ‘Trouble’ Drop

“I Knew You Were Trouble” starts with a clean, syncopated guitar chord. A kick drum joins, underscoring the rhythm, then a bass slides into the mix. For about a minute, Swift’s voice, growing more insistent, is the driving source of the drama, singing about the push and pull of a (bad) boyfriend. When she reaches the hiccuping pre-chorus — “I knew you were trouble when you walked in,” her voice galloping between octaves — the music falls out, save for a piano striking the main chords and few spare guitar strums.

Quickly, the song starts to grow again: drums, doubled vocal tracks, more guitars, more processing. And then, it comes. The drop: an enormous synthy bass with a familiar dubstep wobble.

“Trouble” was one of a trio of songs Swift wrote with Swedish hitmakers Max Martin and Shellback for her 2012 album, “Red” (the others were “22″ and “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”), and it heralded a genuine interest in engaging with the pop formats of the moment. Dubstep, a grimy mode of electronic dance music with teeth-rattling, oscillating bass, had worked its way into the mainstream via artists like Skrillex, whose 2010 EP “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites” became a landmark. Swift credited Ed Sheeran with introducing her to the style, and said she’d told her collaborators she wanted the music to sound “as chaotic as that emotion felt.”

A drop — a build, a pause and then a tension-breaking explosion — is a hallmark of DJ sets, jam-band improvisations and anywhere listeners are reveling in musical ecstasy. On “Trouble,” Swift uses it to replicate the whiplash of a curdled romance. “Oh!” she shrieks as a wall of synths and bass vibrates around her. It was a startling, thrilling moment — the sound of something new brewing. — CARYN GANZ

2014: ‘1989’

Taylor Swift performs on her “1989” world tour at Nationals Park in Washington, July 13, 2015. Look back at six pivotal moments as the singer and songwriter prepares to release her 12th original studio album, “The Life of a Showgirl.” (Doug Mills/The New York Times)

In fall 2014, Swift and her very 2014 flat-ironed bob were filmed by MTV talking to Jack Antonoff, the producer she’d worked with for the first time on her upcoming album, “1989.” Though she’d long established her pop bona fides on the world-conquering “You Belong With Me,” and had later worked with pop maestro Max Martin on “Red,” she was billing “1989” as her “very first documented, official pop album.”

She wanted to make it clear, though, that “1989” was devoid of “evil pop” — a term that she and Antonoff used in the studio, to define an aesthetic they were trying to avoid. “Evil pop,” she clarified in that interview, “is when you’re singing something in your head and it’s like an ‘ohh,’ or an ‘ooh,’ and you don’t know why, because it’s brainless.” Swift asserted that she was aiming for something smarter and more purposeful. “If it’s stuck in your head,” she said of the pop on “1989,” “I want you to know what the song is about as well.”

Over the subsequent decade, when it comes to Swift’s songwriting philosophy, that distinction has proved to be her North Star. Even when she’s streamlined her song structures into their most radio-friendly forms — as she did on “1989” hits like “Blank Space,” “Style” and “Shake It Off,” and on much later singles like “Cruel Summer” and “Anti-Hero” — Swift has always kept an emphasis on lyricism and storytelling. Those tracks were expertly engineered to become lodged in your brain, sure, but at least you knew what you were singing about. Who said all earworms have to be evil? Certainly not Taylor Swift. — LINDSAY ZOLADZ

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