Mind Matters Natural and Artificial Intelligence News and Analysis

TagChatGPT

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Woman freelancer female hands with pen writing on notebook at home or office

Is writing really not important any more?

A New York Times op-ed claims writing isn't as essential as we might assume

There’s a common phrase in many freshman composition classrooms that goes: “To write is to think.” The notion here is simple: The more you organize your thoughts through writing, the more refined, exact, and fully developed your thoughts become. George Orwell, the great British novelist and essayist, wrote to this effect in his great 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language.” Orwell points out how poor thinking leads to bad writing, which in turn leads to worse forms of thinking. And on and on it goes. I’ve personally found this statement to prove true in my own work, and I know so many other writers will say the same thing. Oftentimes, we don’t even really know what we think until Read More ›

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A robot is reading a book in a church. The robot is white and has a book in its hand. The church is empty and the robot is standing in the middle of the room

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 sentient

Anyone 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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Artificial General Intelligence concept visualized with a human hand presenting a glowing brain icon symbolizing advanced AI

Artificial General Intelligence? No, We’re Not There Yet

A few days ago, I retested GPT5.6 Luna with three prompts it had struggled with in the past

The intelligence, understanding, and logical reasoning of ChatGPT and other LLMs continue to be limited by their inability to connect words to the real world.

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An open book with pages creatively folded to form a heart, a symbol of knowledge, love, and storytelling, resting on a wooden surface with a blurred background of bookshelves.

Are Fictionbots Triumphing Over Writers?

At The Spectator, Geoff Bagwell tells us that AI is destined to destroy the creative writing industry as bots take writers’ jobs

Reading for entertainment alone will become increasingly rare. I expect we will return to a culture where people who read are mainly looking for new ideas.

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a-robot-is-reading-a-book-in-a-church-the-robot-is-white-and-1075152240-stockpack-adobestock
A robot is reading a book in a church. The robot is white and has a book in its hand. The church is empty and the robot is standing in the middle of the room

New Study Finds Many Pastors Use AI in Various Ways

It's not just schools. AI is in the churches, too

The way AI is creeping into our cultural and religious institutions is worth keeping an eye on, especially since so many of us look to these places to understand what it means to be human in the first place.

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Global economic bubble showing banks, AI, bitcoin, gold, real estate, and stock market icons inside a fragile sphere. An overvalued financial system and the risk of worldwide economic collapse.

Mind Over Models: An Economist’s Take on AI Speculation

In this bingecast installment of the Mind Matters News podcast, host Robert J. Marks welcomes economics professor and author Gary Smith to discuss the hype around artificial intelligence and its impact on the market. Smith is the Fletcher Jones Professor of Economics at Ponoma College and a frequent contributor to Mind Matters News. Smith argues that generative AI, embodied in services like ChatGPT and Google’s Gemini, exhibits many characteristics of past market bubbles, including excessive hype, lack of profitability, and unrealistic expectations. Smith holds that generative AI models have limited practical economic value. They may be good at finding statistical patterns but struggle to distinguish meaningful, useful correlations from coincidental ones. Smith describes the fundamental challenge of teaching machines true understanding that goes beyond mere pattern recognition. A number of examples and stories are shared throughout.

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Businesspeople meet in the metaverse for a project presentation using VR 360 goggles - Combining business and technology in the virtual world

Meta Retreats from the Metaverse

While Meta is scaling back on the metaverse, it is reportedly switching focus to artificial intelligence.

The ambitious project never paid its expected dividends. Consumers simply weren’t as interested in these VR headsets as Zuckerberg thought they would be.

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Robot Judge in a Law Library Setting

Of Logic and Lawyers: AI’s Fragile Competence

The case against near‑term legal automation—and the AI blind spots that still matter.

First, we must remind ourselves that “data is not the plural of anecdote.”

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A young person engages with a virtual reality headset, interacting with an AI chatbot interface, set against a vibrant blue background, showcasing technology potential. XDMCP

Are Young People Getting Tired of AI?

A new article suggests teens are not universally excited about the blossoming technology

Julie Jargon wrote an interesting piece for The Wall Street Journal about teen attitudes towards AI and found that their view of it isn’t so optimistic as many might assume.

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Animator designer Development designing drawing sketching development creating graphic pose characters sci-fi robot Cartoon illustration animation video game film production , animation design studio.

In 2026, Real Artistry Will Help Brands and Businesses

2025 was AI's big year. Will 2026 follow suit, or will the scales start to balance?

Enter Porsche, the car company, and it’s advertisement, contrasting with Coca-Cola, shows the time-tested beauties of hand-drawn and CGI animation.

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Abstract technology big data background concept.

AI Data Centers Are Using Water, and Lots of It

Will studies like this spark a new kind of pushback in the coming year?

The study has arrived on the heels of Time Magazine’s decision to elect a number of AI company CEOs as its annual “Person of the Year.”

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Programmer working on their professional development types on a laptop computer keyboard. Coding Language User Interface on Screens. Development of software and coding, ChatGPT AI and webdesign

Why I Respectfully Disagree With Bill Dembski on AI in Education

Are GenAI chatbots really the bridge over the gulf of our education crisis?

Dr. Dembski wants us to use technology with wisdom. I share his broader goal, but not the use of generative AI chatbots to get there.

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LLM, AI Large Language Model concept. Businessman use tablet and laptop with LLM icons. A language model distinguished by its general-purpose language generation capability. Chat AI.

The Chatbots’ Most Dangerous Correlations

To give these machines blind trust really is the case of the blind leading the blind, and that is not likely to end well

When you prompt an LLM, the entire conversation acts as a prompt driving the reply. Thus your prompt can push the LLM in unforeseen, unintended directions.

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Old Victorian Printing Press Letters

AI Developers Named Time’s “Person of the Year”

The decision drew a lot of criticism.

On the cover of the magazine issue, tech giants including Sam Altman, Elon Musk, and Mark Zuckerberg are pictured sitting on a construction beam.

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ai copywriting bot using chatgpt for content creation artificial intelligence concept 3d illustration

New ChatGPT Ads Assume People Can’t Think for Themselves

ChatGPT wants to do it all for you.

This sort of thinking assumes that modern people are no longer intelligent enough to do the things that former generations easily managed.

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Cell phone addiction concept. Many teens hold smart device. Social media like obsession. Online communication problem. People watch mobile gadget screen. Art illustration. Cyberspace internet network.

How to Ruin a Generation: Give Everyone Smartphones

What is all of this digital content doing to the souls of kids? To everyone?

For those familiar with the novel Brave New World, this distracted, dopamine-addled brand of a society was all but predicted almost a century ago.

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Chatbot AI Artificial Intelligence technology virtual conversation assistant support mobile smart phone online application chatting with customer service automatic answering. 3d rendering.

AI Psychosis and the Need for Human Exceptionalism

I pronounce you husband and chatbot?

AI is a tool with certain potentials and limits across various fields, but basic anthropological confusion can do a lot of damage. What happens when AI programs cease to be seen as mere tools, meant to used in limited ways and used wisely, and are considered “persons?” It sounds silly to pose the question, but that’s where we are. Futurism writer Frank Landymore reports on an Ohio legislative measure to ban human-AI marital unions. The bill must be intended to be preventative, since AI bots and programs aren’t recognized as legal persons (yet), but it speaks to a cultural trend that, if undealt with, could blow out of proportion. Landymore writes, Popular chatbots are capable of being eerily lifelike, effortlessly Read More ›

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Financial technology concept with humanoid robot analyze stock market

Turing Test 2.0: A Better Way to Test Machine Intelligence?

On this episode of Mind Matters News, host Robert J. Marks speaks with Dr. Georgios Mappouras about his proposal for a more rigorous test for measuring artificial intelligence. Mappouras argues that the original Turing Test is not enough to determine true intelligence in AI systems, as it focuses too much on simulating human-like conversation rather than demonstrating genuine understanding and problem-solving Read More ›

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A cute vintage robot holding a bouquet of flowers. steampunk illustration. illustration. Vintage Robot. Illustration

GPT 5.0 Doesn’t Understand But Is Eager to Please

Over a number of tries, it couldn’t get the labels on an illustration right because it does not understand what the words mean and how they relate to the image

The test also shows GPT 5.0’s inclination to praise a user’s acuity, whether the user’s comment is correct or incorrect, intelligent of dumb.

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Dark fantasy forest. River in the forest with stones on the shore. Moonlight, night forest landscape. Smoke, smog, fog. Bridge over river. Fantasy landscape. 3D illustration.

In Connecticut, the Horrors of AI Descend with Full Force

AI as “friends” and “confidants”? David Klinghoffer warns that this way of talking and thinking needs to be recognized as encouraging delusion

As John West writes, “essentially OpenAI is using its technology as a replacement for human counselors and advisors.”

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