The State of Reading in an AI World
Are we heading to a post-literate society?Whatever one’s opinion, it’s still a fact that, unlike a human writer or artist, AI can’t think or feel.
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Did Orwell’s 1984 Predict the Rise of AI?
A simple act like writing a diary entry emblemizes the struggle to stay humanThree books stand at the top of the dystopian genre, even several decades after their publication: Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley; Fahrenheit 451, by Ray Bradbury; and perhaps supremely, 1984, by George Orwell. Each novel features versions of a futuristic society in which freedom is restricted (through different means) and foresees a bleak existence governed by the basest impulses in the human race. While Orwell’s masterpiece is typically hailed as a warning of the surveillance state, where individuality is erased in favor of group identity, it is also about the rise of technologies that replace human thought. Novelist Walter Kirn points this out in a recent episode of America This Week: 1984 is the story of the extinguishing, the Read More ›
AI Still Can’t Think
It can only create the appearance of thoughtAI, as a tool, can have a lot of benefits and uses, but as we’ve witnessed time and time again, it often makes mistakes.
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AI Blackmail & Clickbait: Give Us Dirty Laundry
Despite all the hype about AI threatening blackmail, here’s what really happened…Chatbots have been trained on such stories. People forget it’s just a machine and panic because they think of it as a person who really thinks things.
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Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4 Can Deceive and Blackmail
Is AI getting out of control?In a bizarre twist, Opus threatened to expose a fictional affair if it were to lose its spot to another AI system.
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AI: The New Industrial Revolution?
Experts try to guess where AI is heading over the next few yearsPerhaps the human conversation alone is argument enough on why AI can never replace us.
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Chicago Sun-Times Used AI to Create Fake Summer Book List
The blind trust in AI continuesHumans write the only books worth reading, and, as we’ve now seen, they’re still the only ones who can come up with an actual list of readable books.
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Does AI Expose Colleges’ Underlying Problem?
AI could be a symptom of a deeper issue in higher educationThe tragedy about AI is that those who depend on it to “think” for them won’t have the work ethic, skill, or wisdom to offer value to the world.
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AI Language Models: Real Intelligence Or Creative Thievery?
Are AI language models like ChatGPT, Grok, and Perplexity actually intelligent? Or are they getting away with a creative kind of thievery? Welcome to the Mind Matters News podcast, your source for discussions on all things philosophy of mind and artificial intelligence. Today, guest host Patrick Flynn continues his conversation with Dr. Eric Holloway and Dr. Robert J. Marks. The Read More ›
AI Slop is Invading the Culture, Replacing Writers
The antidote to AI slop is a renewal of aesthetic and literary tasteThese soulless data-churning machines are spitting out nonsense so pervasively that they’re beginning to shape the way we actually see the world.
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Are Colleges Beyond Saving?
They need to rediscover the purpose of higher educationThe impact of AI and tech addiction is obvious everywhere. But is every college student falling prey to the trends?
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Intelligence Requires More Than Following Instructions
Post-training improves the accuracy and usefulness of LLMs but does not make them intelligent in any meaningful sense — as the Monty Hall problem showsThe danger is not that computers are smarter than us but that we think they are and thus trust them to make decisions they should not be trusted to make.
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AI and the Destructive Lies of the Tool Trope
You've heard this, right? “Technology isn’t good or bad; it’s a tool, it’s just how you use it that matters.” False.Because LLM AIs never understand a single word, image, video, or line of code, they can’t know whether anything they say is right, true, or good.
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Cognitive Psychology and the Limits of AI: An Interview with Dr. Joe McDonald
On this episode, host Robert J. Marks begins a conversation with Dr. Joe McDonald exploring the relationship between cognitive psychology and artificial intelligence (AI). Dr. Joe McDonald is an expert in cognitive psychology and human factors research. He is the CEO and Principal at Jumpseat Research, a firm that applies cognitive science principles to improve technology design and user experiences. Read More ›
The AI Bubble: Lessons from Past Financial Bubbles
In this installment of the Mind Matters News podcast, host Robert J. Marks begins a conversation with economics professor and author Gary Smith about the hype of generative AI 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 Read More ›
Podcast Guest Claims He Won’t Die, Says We’re Creating God With AI
Got immortality? This man says he has the secret.Johnson’s views on AI sound crazy, but they reflect a burgeoning hope that computerized superintelligence will somehow solve all the enigmas of existence.
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2025: Rejecting Brain Rot
Toward a more embodied and human way of lifeFollowing the data, observing personal experience, and developing another vision for human flourishing can get us a step closer to a fuller, intentional life.
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AI Adoption is Slowing Amidst the “Biggest Gamble in Business History”
Workers and companies aren't buying the AI hypeIn the case of AI, knowledge workers are trying to tell us something. They don’t like AI as much the top managers do, and their excitement is falling.
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What’s Happening to Literature?
Why aren't students reading anything anymore?Consider the great literary tradition, which still calls out with its timeless voice, reminding us that it’s still there for the taking for those who eyes to see and ears to hear.
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The Tragic Case of Teen’s Death and Character.AI
From the perspective of friends and family, it looked like Sewell just got mired in his phone. They weren’t aware he “fell for a chatbot.”Sewell spiraled farther down an AI vortex until he fantasized about “joining” the chatbot in some kind of postmortem union.
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