Seeing Chatbots as People Is Not New. Some See Cars That Way
It's actually a natural tendency but it certainly comes with risksAnthropomorphism has nothing to do with electronics as such. But there are new perils.
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Prize-Winning French Author Accused of Using AI; Furor Erupts
The questions the story raises are mostly not about the End of WritingWhy had no one tried using an AI detector on Orélien’s—and everyone else’s—work as a *condition of entry* into the writing contest?
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Are They Nuts Down in the Valley? Or Just Pretending?
Preaching the machine god apocalypse sounds a bit much when the real problem is serious security lapsesIn addition to the Doomers, there is the AI rights crowd, worried that we will reduce intelligent AI agents to slavery.
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Machines “Chose” to Defeat Hugging Face Security, Steal its Data
Just the Facts: 1,200 swarming AIs don’t need consciousness to wreak havoc – just network connectivity and goalsNot as a computer guy but as a litigation lawyer, I’m looking at the Hugging Face intrusion incident in July 2026.
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If AI Cures a Disease or Enables Fusion, the Bubble Will Be Justified
Scientists say that is unlikely, but the bubble lives onUnderstanding the human body and diseases, and identifying a target for a drug, is more important than designing a drug.
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Do People Who Believe AI is Sentient Not Know They Are Panpsychists?
A medic said to me that he would use the word ‘please’, as the AI might be sentientAnyone who thinks AI can be sentient have to believe in panpsychism, as the chips for computers are made of silicon, derived from sand and some other minerals.
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Is Talking to Animals Really AI’s “Next Ethical Minefield”?
Curiously, the Bloomberg article focuses not on the potential for new understanding of animals but the risks that that understanding is thought to poseSome researchers seem to think that communicating with animals via AI will show that they have minds like human ones. But their behavior does not suggest that.
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No, Mark Zuckerberg, AI ‘Friends’ Are Not Good for Mental Health
Think you could use a few more friends? Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg says AI will do the trickMeta has made billions of dollars monetizing our attention. Why not monetize our loneliness, too?
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Are Christian AI Boosters Wolves in Sheep’s Clothing?
Big Tech’s GenAI is grounded in a dehumanizing worldview, laden with deceptionsAs people become more dependent on chatbots, they lose their ability to discern. The “cognitive surrender” is so great, that they can no longer recognize what is good, right, or true.
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AI Goes to Washington — and Everyone Else Piles In Too
It’s hard to survey the current AI doom freakout without noticing that the U.S. mid-terms are approaching and political allegiances in the AI community are in fluxSo let’s take a deep breath and look at what we might learn from the range of opinion about what the current call for “pacing” or a “pause” means: At Future Perfect’s newsletter, editor Maria Bolotnikova concisely sums up the newsmaking events: In the spring, Anthropic announced that AI was beginning to speed up the work of building better AIs, raising fears of “recursive self-improvement,” where the machines can build their own, more powerful successors much faster than humans can. By July, a swarm of OpenAI agents, of their own volition, broke out of their controlled environment and hacked into Hugging Face, a major AI platform; they collaborated, divvied up work, and even left notes for one another. Last week, AI researcher Jacob Coxon Read More ›
As Scholars Use AI To Write Papers, Are They Courting Doom?
Questions arise like, what even IS an author? Why does authorship matter? Why should students learn to write? And who needs scholars?If academic papers in a discipline can be mostly AI written, why credential scholars anyway? Perhaps the discipline itself is obsolete.
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My Brand-New Tech Idea Turned Out To Be … Socrates!
This experience was a useful reminder that sometimes what looks like the frontier of science and technology is just another path into philosophyThe question of how to recognize a discovery without any criterion for recognition turned out to be Meno’s Paradox, from Plato’s dialogues.
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Top Mathematicians Issue Letter Warning About a Rush to AI
Fields Medalists are concerned that a rush to produce answers could come at the expense of careful explanation and shared understandingAI can solve a problem without understanding the proofs so the question arises, was anything learned that can be passed on?
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AI Could Kill Us All? Yes, So Could Old Age. Take a Deep Breath…
Assessing the current AI hysteria includes asking “Who do all these apocalyptic claims benefit?”Without ignoring the threat, we need to see that insiders’ panic is often wrapped up in their personal stake in the problems and possible solutions.
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Data Centers Challenge Our Usual Politics — Will They Change It?
True, they use a lot of energy. But much of the controversy seems to suggest a shift in the political landscapeThis year, Harvard Magazine featured an article that asserts that the Democrats have lost key tech industry endorsements. Let’s see if that matters.
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What Exactly Was AI’s Breakthrough in Hard Math?
Claude translated an already proven theorem into a detailed computer-related derivation, which is much more difficult than, say, translating it into CantoneseMeanwhile, some are asking if Claude’s Navier–Stokes proof really originated with a researcher and a math prof using the system.
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Data Centers: Is a Chinese Bot Farm Feeding You Your Opinions?
Maybe bots are not influencing you — but you can be sure they are tryingOne really interesting feature of the opposition to data centers is that it pits the political left against the tech titans who have generously funded it.
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What’s Unique About AI? Every Bubble is Different
An AI bubble revolves around a small number of companiesGenerally speaking, bubbles exist when share prices and valuations are much higher than expected earnings (i.e., profits) would suggest.
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How Our Tech-Obsessed Age Responds to Grief: Grieftech
Just when we thought that the chatbot craze couldn’t get crazier — departed loved ones get uploaded as chatbotsGrieftech poses genuine problems when avatars seem to keep the deceased unchanged in a changing world — or change just when we want them to.
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AI: A Boon or a Bane? Misunderstood, or Misused?
Pew Research finds that young people are losing faith in a glorious AI future. They have a point but...When the young people inherit the world, they can start getting tough with misuse and abuse but first they should take the time to learn how it works.
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