Tag: News

• Machine learning researcher Jan Leike and scientist Ilya Sutskever just resigned from OpenAI.
• Their team's job, essentially, was to make sure humans are safe from OpenAI's superintelligence.
• The team was racing to make sure AI remains aligned with mankind's interests.

It's too soon to say what major departures at OpenAI mean for the company, or if Sam Altman plans to replace the people in these roles with new staffers. But this isn't a great day for AI doomsayers.

OpenAI cofounder Ilya Sutskever, the company's chief scientist, said on X on Tuesday that he "made the decision to leave OpenAI." Calling it "an honor and a privilege to have worked together" with Altman and crew, Sutskever bowed out from the role, saying he's "confident that OpenAI will build AGI that is both safe and beneficial."

The more abrupt departure came from Jan Leike, another top OpenAI executive. On Tuesday night, Leike posted a blunt, two-word confirmation of his exit from OpenAI on X: "I resigned."

Leike and Sutskever led the superalignment team at OpenAI, which has seen a number of other departures in recent months.

"We need scientific and technical breakthroughs to steer and control AI systems much smarter than us," OpenAI said of superalignment in a July 5, 2023 post on its website. "To solve this problem within four years, we're starting a new team, co-led by Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike, and dedicating 20% of the compute we've secured to date to this effort."

So it follows that part of the duo's work was to, in OpenAI's words, "ensure AI systems much smarter than humans follow human intent."

And the fact that there aren't such controls in place yet is a problem OpenAI recognized, per its July 2023 post.

"Currently, we don't have a solution for steering or controlling a potentially superintelligent AI and preventing it from going rogue. Our current techniques for aligning AI, such as reinforcement learning from human feedback, rely on humans' ability to supervise AI," read OpenAI's post. "But humans won't be able to reliably supervise AI systems much smarter than us, and so our current alignment techniques will not scale to superintelligence. We need new scientific and technical breakthroughs."

Leike — who worked at Google's DeepMind before his gig at OpenAI — had big aspirations for keeping humans safe from the superintelligence we've created.

"It's like we have this hard problem that we've been talking about for years and years and years, and now we have a real shot at actually solving it," Leike said on an August 2023 episode of the "80,000 Hours" podcast.

On his Substack, Leike has outlined how the alignment problem —when machines don't act in accordance with humans' intentions — can be solved and what's needed to solve it.

"Maybe a once-and-for-all solution to the alignment problem is located in the space of problems humans can solve. But maybe not," Leike wrote in March 2022. "By trying to solve the whole problem, we might be trying to get something that isn't within our reach. Instead, we can pursue a less ambitious goal that can still ultimately lead us to a solution, a minimal viable product (MVP) for alignment: Building a sufficiently aligned AI system that accelerates alignment research to align more capable AI systems."

Sutskever, Leike, and representatives for OpenAI did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider, sent outside regular business hours.

• Russian President Vladimir Putin's top economic officials are outshining those in his military, wrote an analyst.
• Russia's economy appears resilient three years into its war with Ukraine.
• In contrast, Russia and Ukraine are fighting a war of attrition when Putin had expected a quick victory.

Russia's President Vladimir Putin on Sunday appointed Andrei Belousov, a civilian economist with no military experience, as the country's defense minister.

It shows Russia's wartime economy is here to stay and that Putin expects the country's military-industrial complex to be a key pillar of the economy.

Putin, who has styled himself to be a macho alpha male, may also be facing an awkward situation in which brains beat out brawns among his top brass.

As Alex Kliment at Eurasia Group's GZERO Media put it in a Monday report, "since the invasion of Ukraine, Putin's nerds have performed better than his jocks."

Russia and Ukraine appear to be fighting a war of attrition more than two years into the war — upsetting the quick and decisive outcome Putin had expected.

"Right from the start, Russia's generals and spies — poorly prepared, badly informed, and deeply corrupt — screwed up what was meant to be a short victorious war," wrote Kliment, who was formerly a Russia analyst at the Eurasia Group.

In comparison, Russia's economic war with the West appears to be faring much better, as the country's economy still seems resilient even amid sweeping sanctions.

This is in large part thanks to the "stars of the math class," led by top Russian central banker Elvira Nabiullina and finance minister Anton Siluanov, who have done "the seemingly impossible," wrote Kliment.

"They kept the Russian economy afloat despite crippling Western financial sanctions. They held the line as the 'War Machine' became central to the economy," he added.

Russia reported GDP growth of 3.6% in 2023, rebounding from a 1.2% contraction in 2022 — the year it invaded Ukraine.

Siluanove said last month that Russia's GDP growth this year is expected to reach 3.6%. Meanwhile, the International Monetary Fund forecast that Russia's economy will grow by 3.2% this year.

Reports from Russia suggest the country's economy is primarily driven by wartime activities that generate demand for military goods and services, subsidies that steady the economy, and sharp policy-making.

Putin's focus on Russia's economy will be on full display when he visits China on Thursday.

The Russian leader is expected to be accompanied by a large trade delegation, new defense minister Belousov, Siluanov, and Nabiullina, among others, according to Russian media reports.

• Ukrainian officials say the ban on US weapons firing into Russia is exposing them to attack.
• Russia invaded Kharkiv this past weekend, weeks after Ukraine said it was massing troops on the border.
• Parliament official Oleksandra Ustinova said Ukraine could only watch as Russia prepared for the assault.

Ukrainian parliamentary officials are pushing the Biden administration to remove restrictions on Kyiv striking targets in Russian territory with its arsenal of US weapons, Politico reported.

In an interview published Tuesday, the outlet quoted two parliamentarians, David Arakhamia and Oleksandra Ustinova, who were visiting Washington to gather support for the request.

Ustinova, head of Ukraine's special parliamentary commission on arms and munitions and leader of the Holos opposition party, spoke repeatedly on the struggles Kyiv has faced because of the strike ban.

"We saw their military sitting one or two kilometers from the border inside Russia, and there was nothing we could do about that," Ustinova told Politico.

Russia launched an offensive in the northeastern region of Kharkiv over the weekend, capturing several settlements and targeting bridges in the area. The renewed incursions come more than a year after Ukraine retook the region in mid-2022.

Ukraine knew for weeks that Russia was massing troops at the border, with intelligence officials saying in early May that Moscow was gathering some 50,000 to 70,000 personnel there.

But the Russian advance has rankled some Ukrainians, who questioned why the area seemed lightly defended after videos emerged of Moscow's troops crossing over unopposed. Ukrainian media reported that the top general responsible for the region's defense was sacked on Tuesday.

Speaking to Politico, Ustinova said the Russians had become "smart now because they know there is a restriction for Ukrainians to shoot at the Russian territory."

"And we saw all of their military equipment sitting one or two kilometers from the border and there was nothing we could do," she said.

Some observers say Moscow's goal on the northern front may be to establish a "buffer zone" that prevents Ukrainian forces from attacking the Russian border instead of pushing toward Kharkiv city.

It also gives the Kremlin space to wheel in artillery that can get in range of Kharkiv city. Ustinova told Politico that Russia aimed to make Kharkiv a repeat of the battle of Mariupol, where fighting was so intense that much of the eastern city was effectively leveled.

"You're giving us a stick, but you will not let us use it," she said.

Washington-based think tank Institute for the Study of War concurred in a Sunday assessment that Russia was able to advance in Kharkiv due to the strike ban for NATO weapons.

"Russian offensive efforts to seize Vovchansk are in large part a consequence of the tacit Western policy that Ukrainian forces cannot use Western-provided systems to strike legitimate military targets within Russia," it wrote.

Ukraine has been attacking targets beyond the border — more recently on Russia's oil facilities — but only with its own drones.

Washington and its allies fear that allowing Ukraine to attack Russian soil with Western equipment would cross a red line with Moscow.

While it's not immediately clear if this would lead to all-out war, other methods for the Kremlin to strike back include organizing terror attacks with radical groups embedded in the West.

To that end, some weapons systems, like the US-supplied HIMARS launchers given to Ukraine, were tweaked before delivery to prevent them from firing into Russia.

The policy has been criticized as a means of effectively shielding Russia from significant Ukrainian counterattack. Still, two anonymous US officials told Politico that the Biden administration isn't changing the rules.

"The assistance is for the defense and not for offensive operations in Russian territory," one official said, per Politico.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside regular business hours by Business Insider.

Kyiv has largely relied on Western-supplied equipment to stave off Russia's advance, saying US artillery has played a major role in its defense. The US recently earmarked some $25.7 billion in military equipment and weapons for Ukraine as part of a new $61 billion tranche of aid that was held back for months in Congress.

• Jan Leike, the co-lead of OpenAI's superalignment group, announced his resignation on Tuesday.
• Leike's exit follows the departure of Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI cofounder and chief scientist.
• Their departures come amid a series of high-profile exits from OpenAI's safety team in recent months.

OpenAI's leadership shakeup continues with the departure of Jan Leike, who tweeted on Tuesday night that he had resigned.

Leike co-led OpenAi's superalignment group, a team that focuses on making its artificial intelligence systems align with human interests.

In September, he was named one of Time 100's most influential people in AI.

Leike announced his departure hours after Ilya Sutskever, the other superalignment leader, said he was exiting.

Sutskever, who cofounded OpenAI and was its chief scientist, said he is leaving after almost a decade, he said in a post on X, formerly known as Twitter. Sutskever added he was "excited" about his next steps, which he said he would share more details about "in due time."

Leike's short post — "I resigned" — is sure to fuel speculation about his and Sutskever's next moves.

In a post on X, OpenAI cofounder Sam Altman said, "Ilya and OpenAI are going to part ways. This is very sad to me; Ilya is easily one of the greatest minds of our generation, a guiding light of our field, and a dear friend. His brilliance and vision are well known; his warmth and compassion are less well known but no less important."

Altman did not immediately address Leike's departure.

The news comes on the tail of several high-profile OpenAI departures. Two executives, Diane Yoon and Chris Clark, quit weeks ago, The Information reported. Yoon was the VP of people, and Clark was head of nonprofit and strategic initiatives. OpenAI also parted ways with researchers Leopold Aschenbrenner and Pavel Izmailov, according to another report by The Information last month. They both have worked on the superalignment team.

BI reported last week that two employees who worked on safety and governance resigned in recent months. Daniel Kokotajlo left last month and William Saunders departed OpenAI in February.

OpenAI and Leike did not immediately respond to requests for comment from Business Insider, sent outside standard working hours.

• Google's Gemini in Search demo video, released Tuesday, made a factual error.
• Gemini suggested opening a film camera without a dark room, which would ruin the photos.
• Google's demo videos have made such mistakes in the past too.

In two back-to-back days of big launches, OpenAI and Google showed the world their newest artificial intelligence projects.

They made impressive demo videos featuring all the new things OpenAI's ChatGPT-4o can do, and how Google's Gemini will revolutionize Search as we know it.

But Google's Tuesday video shows one of the major pitfalls of AI: wrong, not just bad, advice. A minute into the flashy, quick-paced video, Gemini AI in Google Search presented a factual error first spotted by The Verge.

A photographer takes a video of his malfunctioning film camera and asks Gemini: "Why is the lever not moving all the way." Gemini provides a list of solutions right away — including one that would destroy all his photos.

The video of the list highlights one suggestion: "Open the back door and gently remove the film if the camera is jammed."

Professional photographers — or anyone who has used a film camera — know that this is a terrible idea. Opening a camera outdoors, where the video takes place, could ruin some or all of the film by exposing it to bright light.

Google has faced similar issues with earlier AI products.

Last year, a Google demo video showing the Bard chatbot incorrectly said that the James Webb Space Telescope was the first to photograph a planet outside our own solar system.

Earlier this year, the Gemini chatbot was hammered for refusing to produce pictures of white people. It was criticized for being too "woke" and developing photos riled with historical inaccuracies like Asian Nazis and Black founding fathers. Google leadership apologized, saying they "missed the mark."

Tuesday's video highlights the perils of AI chatbots, which have been producing hallucinations, which are incorrect predictions, and giving users bad advice. Last year, users of Bing, Microsoft's AI chatbot, reported strange interactions with the bot. It called users delusional, tried to gaslight them about what year it is, and even professed its love to some users.

Companies using such AI tools may also be legally responsible for what their bots say. In February, a Canadian tribunal held Air Canada responsible for its chatbot feeding a passenger wrong information about bereavement discounts.

Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment sent outside standard business hours.

• Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang received a $34.2 million compensation package in fiscal 2024.
• Huang's pay rose 60% from 2023, driven by Nvidia's stock surge amid demand for the company's AI chips.
• Nvidia's stock has tripled in a year, making it the third-most valuable company globally.

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang got a huge payday last year thanks to strong demand for the company's AI chips.

Huang, who is also a cofounder of Nvidia, received a $34.2 million compensation package for the fiscal year, which runs from February to January, the company's annual proxy filing shows.

Huang's total compensation for the 2024 fiscal year was a 60% jump from the year before, when he was awarded $21.4 million, according to the document filed on Tuesday.

His compensation consisted of $26.7 million in stock awards, $4 million in cash bonuses, and $2.5 million for other expenses, including residential security, and car and driver.

Huang's payday bonanza came as Nvidia's share price sustained a rally on the back of the AI frenzy.

Demand for Nvidia's chips is so high that Huang had to assure analysts in his fourth-quarter earnings call that the company was allocating them "fairly."

Nvidia is not set to report first-quarter results until next week, but it's already dominating the earnings season with its AI chips, Business Insider's Matthew Fox reported recently.

The demand for AI chips has sent Nvidia's share price tripling in the past year, making the $2.3 trillion company the third-most valuable company in the world after Microsoft and Apple.

Nvidia's share price surge has also boosted the personal wealth of Huang, who is now the 18th-richest man in the world, with a fortune of $80.5 billion, according to the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. This is mainly thanks to Huang's 3.8% stake in the company.

Huang is not the only Nvidia executive seeing a major rise in compensation.

The compensation for Colette Kress, Nvidia's chief financial officer, rose by about 22% to $13.3 million last year.

Rank-and-file staff also saw their pay rise, with the median employee taking home $266,939 in fiscal 2024, which was 17% more than the year before.

Nvidia's share price closed 1.1% higher at $913.56 on Tuesday. The stock is up 85% so far this year and has gained over 200% over the past 12 months.

• Heavy winds blew down a billboard in Mumbai on Monday, crushing a petrol station and killing 14.
• Dozens of people were trapped for hours under the debris, with 75 people injured, authorities said.
• Authorities say they're taking down illegally erected billboards, some of which were larger than permitted.

At least 14 people were killed by a falling billboard in Mumbai, India after its structure collapsed due to stormwinds and crashed into several houses and a petrol station.

Local police said the billboard measured 70 meters by 50 meters, or about 230 feet by 165 feet, and collapsed on Monday at a petrol pump in the Ghatkopar suburb.

Dozens were trapped in the wreckage for hours, police added.

City officials confirmed in a statement on X that 14 people had died from the collapse and that an additional 75 people were injured. As of Tuesday, when the statement was issued, at least 31 of them had been discharged from medical treatment.

They said "speedy winds" had caused the hoarding to fall.

Footage shared on social media showed the billboard's metal supports giving way as it tipped over on one side, flattening cars and buildings in seconds.

A video of the aftermath published by The Associated Press showed the petrol station's collapsed roof, where crews worked to clear debris.

Local media reported that the billboard was larger than legally permitted and may have been erected without permission. The BBC, citing city authorities, reported the same.

Municipal authorities said on X they have since demolished three billboards set up illegally near the collapsed advertisement.

"An inquiry is already being ordered into the incident. Strict action will be taken against the culprits," said Devendra Fadnavis, deputy chief minister of Mumbai's state, Maharashtra.

He said the government has organized around $6,000 in financial assistance for affected families. Typical annual wages in the city range from $5,200 to $7,200, per salary aggregation firms.

Mumbai has been battered by heavy rains and strong winds in the past week, and India's Meteorological Department expects thunderstorms and squalls to continue in Maharashtra for several days.

Dust storms have also emerged intermittently amid the rains, blanketing the city of 18 million in gray and orange hues.

The coastal urban hub hasn't even hit its monsoon season yet, which typically runs from June to September. Mumbai is often subject to floods during this period, with local media estimating that about 35% of the city sees chronic flooding.

• Apple will have to swing big at its developer conference if it wants to be seen as serious in AI.
• While Google and OpenAI revealed impressive AI assistants this month, Apple rolled out new iPads.
• All eyes will be on Apple in June at its WWDC, according to analysts.

While Apple's Big Tech competitors have announced leaps forward in the artificial intelligence space this month, the iPhone maker has instead said it's bringing consumers thinner iPads.

It's going to have to do a bit better, analysts say.

OpenAI and Google's demonstrations on May 13 and May 14, respectively, showed the two companies pushing AI capabilities forward. In OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's words, it's a bit of "magic,"

OpenAI's new GPT-4o, introduced Monday, can translate speech, identify emotions over video, and tutor students. Google's Gemini can plug into Gmail to summarize emails, create spreadsheets based on information, and formulate replies.

Even Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram have integrated Meta's AI into app search fields.

Apple, though, has kept pretty quiet about its own AI ambitions so far — and it's increasingly obvious.

"The buzz around AI, and specifically GenAI, has been so deafening that Apple is noticeable by omission," Dipanjan Chatterjee, vice president and principal analyst at Forrester, told Business Insider.

And while it's in Apple's nature to focus more on products — like its announcement about its new iPads on May 7 — the tight-lipped culture it's famous for is "about to give out" in the face of calls for more clarity about its AI strategy, Chatterjee said.

It's all adding pressure for Apple to stick the landing on the technology at next month's Worldwide Developers Conference now that Google and OpenAI have unveiled their arsenals.

"Apple's way behind when it comes to AI," Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, told BI.

Munster said Apple should consider both of this week's events a "wake-up call." He predicts that Apple's only option to catch up is to partner with OpenAI or Google, saying it'd be nearly impossible for Apple to "close the gap" with AI competitors on its own.

While Apple's reportedly been in talks with both companies about bringing either OpenAI or Gemini to the next iPhone, there have been no official announcements on its plans in the burgeoning field — unlike Google and OpenAI's massive, live-streamed presentations.

Apple's big announcement last week was a new and improved version of the iPad — a product that's been around for 14 years.

Still, if the rumors about OpenAI or Gemini iPhone integration are true, this week's "strong announcements actually would bode well for Apple," William Kerwin, an analyst at Morningstar, said.

He continued: "The voice application in the new GPT-4o model looked like it was primed for Siri integration to me, if it works out that way."

And Wedbush's Dan Ives warned people not to count Apple out of the AI "Game of Thrones" just yet, even if it feels like Microsoft, Google, and OpenAI are ahead in the game right now.

The analyst told BI that the new iPad rollout is simply an "appetizer to the real meat and potatoes" of Apple's AI strategy, expected to be announced at the WWDC in June.

• IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva says AI will hit the job market "like a tsunami."
• "We have very little time to get people ready for it, businesses ready for it," she said on Monday.
• In January, Georgieva predicted that AI will affect roughly 40% of jobs worldwide. 

The AI revolution could have a huge negative impact on the global job market, IMF Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva said on Monday.

The IMF chief was delivering a speech at the Swiss Institute of International Studies in Zurich, where she talked about the impact AI could have on job seekers.

AI, Georgieva said, is striking the job market "like a tsunami."

"We have very little time to get people ready for it, businesses ready for it," she said. "It could bring tremendous increase in productivity if we manage it well, but it can also lead to more misinformation and, of course, more inequality in our society."

This isn't the first time Georgieva has sounded warning calls on AI. In January, she penned a blog post where she predicted that AI "will affect almost 40% of jobs around the world."

"Roughly half the exposed jobs may benefit from AI integration, enhancing productivity. For the other half, AI applications may execute key tasks currently performed by humans, which could lower labor demand, leading to lower wages and reduced hiring," Georgieva wrote.

"In the most extreme cases, some of these jobs may disappear," she continued.

Representatives for IMF did not immediately respond to a request for comment from BI sent outside regular business hours.

Georgieva's warnings appear to be prescient, considering the new offerings that have been served up by AI upstarts like OpenAI this week.

On Monday, OpenAI announced its latest flagship AI model, GPT-4o. The model, which will be made free to all users, "can reason across audio, vision, and text in real time," making it suitable for tasks like teaching and translation.

Demos of the software have taken the internet by storm, reigniting concerns that AI could decimate the job market as we know it.

Even OpenAI's cofounder and CEO, Sam Altman, has regularly warned people of AI's potential impact on the job market. On May 7, Altman told attendees at a Brookings Institution panel that people were underestimating AI's impact on the economy.

"GPT- 4 didn't have this huge detectable impact on the economy, and so people were kind of like, 'Oh well, we were too worried about that, and that's not a problem,'" Altman said, referencing the AI model that OpenAI released last year.

"I have a fear that we just won't take that one seriously enough going forward, and it's a massive, massive issue," he continued.

That said, some experts do believe that the AI's rise will provide job seekers with different opportunities as well.

In November, LinkedIn vice president Annesh Raman said in a podcast interview that while AI will reduce the value of technical skills, it will also make soft skills more important.

"In the 1980s, when Microsoft released Excel, people were petrified and said it would put all of these accountants out of a job. We've got more accountants now than in the 1980s," Simon Lucey, the director of the University of Adelaide's Australian Institute for Machine Learning, told BI on Tuesday.

• Angela Alsobrooks is projected to be the winner of Maryland's Democratic Senate primary.
• Alsobrooks will now face former Republican Gov. Larry Hogan in the general election.
• Democrats can't afford to lose Maryland as they look to hang on to their narrow Senate majority.

Rep. David Trone, one of the wealthiest members of Congress, spent over $60 million of his own fortune to try to win a Democratic Senate primary. The Associated Press called the election for his competitor.

With nearly 40% of all votes in, Prince George's County Executive Angela Alsobrooks is projected to have defeated Trone in Maryland's Democratic US Senate primary, according to Decision Desk HQ. Alsobrooks will now face former Gov. Larry Hogan, who easily won the Republican primary, in the November general election.

Hogan is a major GOP recruit whose candidacy has turned the Maryland contest into one of the closest-watched races ahead of November.

Trone, a three-term House Democrat, made millions before entering politics by co-founding Total Wine & More, the nation's largest private wine retailer. In a striking pitch to voters, he argued that his vast wealth was an asset to the Democratic Party and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. Schumer can't afford to lose the Senate seat if he wants to keep the party's slim majority in the chamber. Trone's point was that if the party has to spend money defending Maryland, it will have less available in other close races.

"We're going to continue to spend whatever it takes to win," Trone told reporters last week, according to CNN. "That will give them a lot more flexibility to spend money elsewhere. And I'm sure that will appeal to the leader Schumer."

When Alsobrooks jumped into the Senate race, she touted her work as a domestic violence prosecutor and her experience leading the state's second-most populous jurisdiction in making the case for her candidacy. As county executive, she has been immersed in the nuts and bolts of local government and focused heavily on public safety, an issue that Republicans have sought to hammer Democrats on in recent cycles.

And Alsobrooks — who was endorsed by Maryland Democratic heavy hitters including Gov. Wes Moore, Sen. Chris Van Hollen, and veteran Rep. Steny Hoyer — had long made it clear that she felt Trone's financial edge would not define the campaign in the eyes of voters.

"I think Marylanders are really savvy," Alsobrooks told Washington-area CBS affiliate WUSA9 in a March interview. "And they recognize that you should not be able to buy a Senate seat."

The race between the two Democrats became heated in the closing days. Since Trone and Alsobrooks agreed on most policy areas, the contest became a proxy battle over identity and the party's future. Alsobrooks leaned into her history-making candidacy, an appeal underlined by the reality that the Senate could soon again be without a Black woman. Despite having a 10-member congressional delegation, Maryland doesn't currently have a woman representing the state in either chamber.

Alsobrooks' allies also tried to blunt Trone's massive financial advantage by pointing out that Trone's firm donated to Republicans who have supported restricting access to abortion. Trone, who supports abortion rights, responded by pointing out that he left Total Wine's parent company in 2015 and has received a 100% rating from the abortion-rights advocacy organization Reproductive Freedom for All (formerly NARAL Pro-Choice Americas).

Trone was forced to reel in one of his campaign's sharpest attacks.

According to The Washington Post, Trone edited a surrogate's comment on a recent ad that suggested that Alsobrooks would need "training wheels" in the Senate.

Democrats currently control the Senate by a narrow 51-49 margin, and with West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin's retirement at the end of his term, Republicans are virtually guaranteed to pick up his seat.

Republicans see Montana and Ohio as their top Democratic Senate targets this year, while also looking to compete in Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

But Hogan's candidacy in Maryland — in one of the bluest states in the country — is giving them hope where they would otherwise not have a top-tier candidate.