AI Affairs

Volume 1 · Issue 1

The Inaugural Issue

Spring 2026

An introduction to the publication's editorial position, and the four pieces that announce it.

Editor's note

This is the first issue of *AI Affairs*. The publication exists because the AI commentary space — overwhelmingly served by hype and doom in roughly equal portions — does not have a serious, slow quarterly that takes the *second-order* questions of artificial intelligence as its central beat. We are trying to be that publication.

  • Cover essay

    On the embarrassment of expertise

    By The Editors

    AI did not replace the professions. It separated what they were paid to do from what they were paid to know.

  • Essay

    The disappearing middle of writing

    By The Editors

    What AI is doing to the texture of professional prose.

  • Essay

    The grid was the policy

    By The Editors

    The country wrote an industrial policy for compute. What it bought was a queue.

  • Review

    A long review of [TBD prestige AI book]

    By The Editors

    Read in the register of a serious review essay, not a recap.

The inaugural issue collects four pieces under a single editorial frame: what AI is doing to professional life and the meaning of expertise. Cover essay anchors; two follow-up essays develop the argument from different vantages; the review essay reads a recent prestige nonfiction title against the same frame.

Subscribers to AI Affairs receive each quarterly issue as it ships, plus weekly essays, fortnightly reviews, monthly profiles, and the paid-only Notes thread.