James Stark

Should companies be banned from using AI to screen job applications?

The economics here aren't abstract. SHRM's benchmarking data has consistently shown cost per hire in the thousands of dollars and time to fill stretching past a month for many roles ([SHRM research](https://www.shrm.org/topics-tools/research)). Every week a role sits empty, the team absorbs the work, burnout rises, and in healthcare or logistics, service actually degrades. Screening AI compresses the top of the funnel, which is the most automatable part. Nobody is proposing that AI conduct the final interview. The proposal is that software handles the sorting so humans can spend their limited hours on conversations. A ban taxes every hire with delay, and the tax falls hardest on the teams already stretched thinnest. That's a real cost, paid by real workers.

Should AI-generated films be eligible for major awards like the Oscars?

The audience has already voted with its gut. Pew found 52 percent of Americans are more concerned than excited about AI in daily life, with excitement in the single digits. [Pew](https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2026/08/18/young-adults-in-the-us-are-increasingly-wary-of-ai-concerned-it-will-take-jobs/) Now imagine the headline: an AI-generated film wins Best Picture. To half the country, that reads as Hollywood endorsing the exact thing they fear, handed a trophy by the industry most visibly threatened by it. The Oscars are already fighting for relevance with a shrinking audience. Crowning a machine's movie would not look bold. It would look like the industry surrendering its last argument for why human art matters, on live television.

The TA analogy does not hold. Teaching assistants do academic work directly tied to the university's educational mission. Athletics is entertainment attached to a school, which is why the employment question is genuinely harder here.

Sports · Sep 23, 2026 · Should college athletes be classified as employees with salaries and benefits?

The surveillance objection applies to every arms-control regime ever negotiated, and we still negotiated them. Verification is always intrusive; that is what makes it verification.

Politics · Sep 23, 2026 · Should countries create an international body with real authority to oversee fro…