AI spending takes center stage ahead of midterms
Marketplace Tech

AI spending takes center stage ahead of midterms

B2Upper-intermediateOctober 7, 20267 min
  • Interview
  • Politics

OpenAI President Greg Brockman and his wife recently backed out of a planned $25 million donation to Leading the Future, an artificial intelligence-focused political action committee. Brockman said the PAC had become a “distraction” at OpenAI. But only after the executive had already given an initial $25 million. AI-focused PACs are spending big to shape competing visions for AI policy in the midterm elections. Brendan Glavin, Director of Insights at OpenSecrets, explains how these PACS are looking to influence elections this year.

Play episode

Opens the player: the full transcript, every word clickable, with translation and flashcards.

Try it: tap any word

Real sentences from the start of this episode. Every word is marked with its level.

Sentence 8 of 12 · 0:25

And Trinity's spent nearly a decade pushing to make that a reality,

to helping pass the first-in-the-nation law letting California cities and counties start their own public banks.

Hear this sentence

Tap a word to see its meaning in your language.

Do you know these words?

8 harder words from this episode. Tap one to see what it means, then mark it.

  • C10:25
  • B21:26
  • B23:14
  • B23:57
  • B25:41
  • C17:17
  • B27:53
  • C19:33

Mark a few words and we'll tell you how this episode fits your level.

Is this episode right for you?

B2

B2 · Upper-intermediate

Comfortable if you already follow TV news

A1 33%A2 28%B1 22%B2 15%C1 2%
  • 83% of the words are B1 or easier.
  • 205 words a minute: natural, fairly fast speech.
  • 57 harder words (B2 and up) in the whole episode.

Transcript

The opening of the episode. The whole transcript is in the player.

0:00

Money ultimately decides what gets built, what survives. Money decides what future becomes possible. So change where money goes and who controls it, then you change what becomes possible.

0:11

That's Trinity Tran, Ted Fellow and co-founder of the California Public Banking Alliance and Public Bank LA. A public bank is owned by the people through their local government. And Trinity's spent nearly a decade pushing to make that a reality, from getting LA to pull its money out of a large-scale private bank

0:29

to helping pass the first-in-the-nation law letting California cities and counties start their own public banks. The reason? Los Angeles just dealt with a devastating wildfire. So if we had a public bank, it would have been able to step in to offer immediate low-cost loans

That was the opening. The rest of the episode (7 min) is in the player: every word clickable, with translation, saved words and flashcards.

Continue in the player

Automatically generated from the audio. May contain errors. Audio belongs to its publisher and is played from their feed. Rights holders can request removal — copyright & takedown policy