The polar bear video has millions of views. Set to a haunting piano score that’s become ubiquitous on TikTok, it shows a lone bear swimming between increasingly distant ice floe. The comments section overflows with teenage grief, rage, and helplessness. Beside my laptop screen lies the latest Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) report. Same … Read more
Philosopher Nick Bostrom recently posted a paperwhere he postulated that a small chance of AI annihilating all humans might be worth the risk, because advanced AI might relieve humanity of “its universal death sentence.” That upbeat gamble is quite a leap from his previous dark musings on AI, which made him a doomer godfather. His … Read more
Superhuman, the tech company behind the writing software Grammarly, is facing a class action lawsuit over an AI tool that presented editing suggestions as if they came from established authors and academics—none of whom consented to have their names appear within the product. Julia Angwin, an award-winning investigative journalist who founded The Markup, a nonprofit … Read more
Do you have fond memories of being a teacher’s pet? Wish you could still get notes from your favorite college professor? Dream about some implacable voice of authority correcting your every word choice and punctuation mark? Well, great news: A certain software company has engineered a way to simulate criticism not just from bestselling authors … Read more
The Blake Lemoine The incident is remembered today as a high‑water mark of AI hype. It thrust the whole idea of conscious AI into public awareness for a news cycle or two, but it also launched a conversation, among both computer scientists and consciousness researchers, that has only intensified in the years since. While the … Read more