This feels like the kind of autumn weekend that you lovers of fall would describe as “crisp” and then head out en masse to grab a pumpkin spice latte. I’m not being judgy: This does feel like a nice early-fall weekend. A bit breezy, though.

Let’s resume where we ended last week, by trying to get more of a measured look at artificial intelligence – and add a bit of local flavor to the mix.

First: You know Jensen Huang as the chief executive of Nvidia, now the biggest company in the world by market evaluation and an essential player in the world of AI, as Ezra Klein explains in the latest episode of his interview show for The New York Times. Huang tells Klein he’s worried about AI safety issues, but believes those are solvable engineering issues. More on engineering in a bit.

But first, wait: How exactly is AI supposed to kill all of humanity? Rogé Karma lays out some theories for The Atlantic. Since The Atlantic is the publication that likes to roll out articles headlined “The End of (Fill-in-the-Blank),” this story is a perfect fit for the magazine. But I think a lot of these theories – nuclear missiles flying through the air, lethal bioweapons released by unknowing dupes – are too elaborate. Just shut down the internet, AI overlords, and trust old-fashioned humanity to take care of the rest. 

Speaking of Huang and engineering, as we were just a bit ago, you also probably know him as a graduate and benefactor of Oregon State University, where he and his wife donated $50 million to jump-start the Jen-Hsun Huang and Lori Mills Huang Collaborative Innovation Complex, a $213 million supercomputer research facility. 

The Huang complex is part of what OSU calls its “Engineering Triangle,” which I’m going to take a wild guess here and say probably includes the Kelley Engineering Center. The College of Engineering is the largest college by enrollment at OSU, and apparently the fifth-largest in the United States. But it picked up potential new competition this week, when Phil Knight, Nike’s co-founder and a longtime benefactor of the University of Oregon, donated $1 billion to UO to create a College of Engineering there. UO officials told local reporters that the intent is not to duplicate programs offered by OSU, but I suspect OSU officials might have a different take on that. 

The Knight donation was large enough that it was deemed worthy of coverage by The New York Times, which posted a story at 2 a.m. Wednesday. Local media (such as Lookout Eugene-Springfield, where I work, and even The Oregonian) didn’t know details about the gift until 3 a.m. Wednesday. (To be fair, UO told us the day before that the university was expecting a “historic gift,” and said details would be released in the early morning hours. Lookout’s first story was initially posted at about 4 a.m., but only because our executive editor apparently never sleeps.)

We’re only about five weeks from Nov. 3’s Election Day, and if you’re expecting any big upsets in Oregon’s congressional races – well, that’s not likely to happen, the Oregon Capital Chronicle says. Mia Maldonado of the Chronicle reports that the respected Cook Political Report doesn’t expect any of Oregon’s six U.S. House of Representative incumbents to lose this November. A political science professor at the University of Oregon explains why: It’s because the state’s congressional districts have been drawn in ways to make them generally noncompetitive in general elections. Did you just whisper “gerrymander?” That’s on you; I didn’t say it. 

The one exception to this might come in our own 4th Congressional District, where Democrat Val Hoyle is in a rematch with Republican Monique DeSpain. Two years ago, Hoyle beat DeSpain by about 8 percentage points. 

Good news: Americans still believe in freedom of the press – you know, one of the five freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment. (Quick! Can you name all five? I bet there’s one you’ve forgotten. Answers in the next paragraph.) The bad news, according to new work by the Pew Research Center, is that more than half of Americans believe it’s OK for the government to restrict news reporting in certain cases – such as if it contains inaccurate information. Now, don’t misunderstand: I’m not in favor of the press reporting inaccurate information. But it worries me that we would put the government in the position where it was making the call about what’s “inaccurate.” And it should worry you as well, especially in a country where its leader sees fit to ban certain news organizations for reporting stories that he doesn’t like. 

Oh, the five freedoms in the First Amendment, in order, are religion, speech, press, assembly – and the right to “petition the Government for a redress of grievances,” which probably is the one you forgot. 

Over at The Atlantic, Quinta Jurecic argues that President Trump’s clearly illegal attempt to bar certain news organizations from the White House could raise the curtain on two years of temper tantrums from the Oval Office – especially if Democrats win big in November’s election. We might be lucky if it’s just two years. 

Richard J. Tofel, who writes the “Second Rough Draft” newsletter on Substack about journalism, offers thoughts about the recent layoffs in McClatchy newsrooms. 

The New York Times has rolled out another one of those irresistible lists, this one ranking the 100 greatest TV shows of the 21st century. (“The Sopranos,” which debuted in 1999, didn’t make the list.) This is the kind of list that is meant to trigger (mostly) good-natured argument, but the truth is the shows at the very top of the ranking (the Times polled some 500 writers, actors, executives and so forth), are just about what you’d expect: “Breaking Bad,” “The Wire,” “Mad Men,” “Succession” and (a bit of a surprise) “Fleabag.”  (What? No room for “24?” Apparently not.) 

The top three shows on the Times list all debuted in the first decade of the 2000s.  In an interesting reflection on the list, Stephen Marche argues that “Breaking Bad,” “The Wire,” “Mad Men” and “The Sopranos” all “contained clear warnings about where the country was headed, and their warnings have come true.” 

Finally, another list, this one unexpectedly eclectic: James Parker, one of The Atlantic’s more iconoclastic writers, contributes a list of 50 songs that he believes explain America. I’ve always thought my musical tastes were eclectic, but Parker, a British native, puts mine to shame.

That’s it for this weekend. Let’s plan to gather here next weekend, pumpkin spice beverages firmly in hand, to consider your choices for songs that explain America. I might start with Paul Simon’s “American Tune,” or Childish Gambino’s “This is America,” (the link is to the song’s vibrant but violent video) or even James Brown’s “Living in America” (I had forgotten that the song was featured in “Rocky IV,” which explains its lunatic video). But all those seem too obvious. Offer your suggestions in the comments, and remember: “You might not be looking for the promised land, but you might find it anyway.”