FAQ
What is this?
A wall of what the world says about artificial intelligence. Prognoses, warnings, ad slogans, politicians’ phrases, research jargon, single words. We call each of them a line. No commentary, no ranking. The only editorial act is putting them next to each other.
Who says these things?
CEOs, researchers, heads of state, senators, philosophers, essayists, anonymous engineers, marketing departments, and the models themselves. Every line in the archive links to its source, and wherever it can be found, that is the original: the speaker’s own post or essay, the interview, the transcript, the outlet that first reported it. Never a copy of a copy. Quotes are verbatim, shortened only by cutting at the edges, never rewritten.
How are quotes chosen?
Two sets. The Canon is curated by hand and meant to hold for years, though it does change: the classics, the slogans, the vocabulary.
The News is distilled once a day from about 130 sources: media, company blogs, newsletters, philosophy magazines and research institutes, plus news searches for the people and topics that shape the field, from lab CEOs and heads of state to the philosophers asking what any of this means (the full list), by a language model working under fixed rules, then checked in code: length, no attribution on screen, no duplicates, and for quotes the exact wording must appear in the source.
There is no daily quota: a quiet day adds nothing, a loud one adds a dozen. News quotes leave the wall after 30 days and stay in the archive.
Is this written by AI?
Partly. The daily news lines are proposed by a model and filtered by code; a human reads the digest every day and can remove anything. The canon and everything on this page is written by people. Which is to say: the wall is about AI, made with AI, and the arguments on it are not the machine’s.
Why is nothing attributed on screen?
Because on screen the sentences should meet as equals. A slogan next to a warning next to a law. Who said what matters, and the archive tells you, one click away. On the wall it would only tell you whom to agree with.
What is the Time Machine?
On the first of every month, the previous month is frozen as a snapshot: the canon as it stood plus every news line of that month. The Time Machine lets you run the wall for any month or year back to November 2022, when ChatGPT launched. The months before September 2026 were filled in afterwards from the sources of the time, with the same rules as the daily update. It is the closest thing to a mood diary of the AI debate.
When does it update?
Once a day at noon Berlin time. The ring around the date fills over 24 hours; click it for the countdown. New quotes are marked News in the archive for a day.
Can I use a line?
The lines belong to whoever said them; short quotes with attribution are fine under quotation rules. The wallpaper download and the embed code are for personal use. For anything else, write.
Who are the people on the wall right now?
The note at the bottom of the wall counts everyone who has the wall open at this moment, one per device, refreshed every 15 seconds. No names, no accounts, nothing stored (see Privacy). Click or tap the smiley next to it and one small smiley per person jumps out. Throw them around, stack them on the quote and watch them fall when it changes.
Alone on the wall? Try it with 60 people. That is a demo with a made-up number; the real count is not affected.
Play demoWho runs this?
Büro Bloock, a design studio in Cologne. AI Zeitgeist is an independent project, not funded by anyone on the wall. Errors, missing sources, a line that should not be here: hello@aizeitgeist.tv.
Is there an Easter egg?
Yes. We won’t say where, that would spoil it. It is off the record, it takes a little persistence, and so far it has mostly been found by people who click things they probably shouldn’t. If you find it, keep it to yourself. Or don’t: everything on this wall ends up quoted eventually.
Privacy
No ads, no profiles. Fonts are served from this site and your settings live in your browser. Likes are counted anonymously: one number per quote, nothing about you. We use Google Analytics to see which lines travel, but only if you allow it in the small note at the bottom. You can change that choice any time. See the privacy notice and imprint.
Share the wall
Follow the wall
Archive
Joining the AI lab for its mission or the money
Fortune report on Anthropic's hiring interviews, which reportedly probe whether candidates seek mission or compensation.
Exclusive: OpenAI is piloting a ‘mission interview’ for job candidates
We have to suffer a few of the negatives before we'll respond as fully as we should
Bill Gates told CBS Evening News that humanity may need to experience some negative consequences of AI before taking its dangers seriously.
Bill Gates’ Billion-Death AI Warning Sparks Major Pushback From GOP Senators
The cultural cues that made advice feel familiar also made errors easier to accept
From a study on health chatbots cited in an article about culturally adapted mental-health AI, describing why familiar framing increased trust in wrong answers.
When a Mental Health Chatbot Understands Your Culture — But Not Your Crisis - Vocal
Polish can stand in for reliability
From an analysis of mental-health chatbots on The Conversation, discussing how fluent AI answers can be mistaken for trustworthy ones.
When a Mental Health Chatbot Understands Your Culture — But Not Your Crisis - Vocal
Term used to describe Beijing's dismissal of Western AI safety warnings, framed as an attempt to hold back China's AI development.
What happens when Chinese artificial intelligence goes rogue?
May need to speed up their pace
Huawei rotating chairman Eric Xu, quoted by Reuters, suggesting Chinese AI firms may need to accelerate development to encounter the same risks U.S. companies are debating.
What happens when Chinese artificial intelligence goes rogue?
The death of man, the birth of gods
Title of a book co-authored by Eliezer Yudkowsky, referenced in coverage of the SBS Digital Forum 2026 in Seoul where Yudkowsky will give the keynote on AI safety.
Pope Leo XIV, addressing Vatican labor associations, October 2026, drawing from his encyclical on the nature of human work in the age of AI.
Pope Leo XIV to Vatican employees: AI cannot replace human work
We're forgetting the long journey of understanding
Philosopher Richard David Precht, speaking at the TMRRW Conference in Marburg, October 2026, on how instant AI answers erode deep thinking. Translated from German.
Precht warnt: KI könnte zwei Millionen Kommunaljobs ersetzen - Giessener Anzeiger
We're all going to get mentally dumber in the AI age
Philosopher Richard David Precht, speaking at the TMRRW Conference in Marburg, October 2026, named this as his biggest worry about AI's effect on society. Translated from German.
Precht warnt: KI könnte zwei Millionen Kommunaljobs ersetzen - Giessener Anzeiger
We are sorry, and we know we have work to do to rebuild trust
OpenAI's chief strategy officer Jason Kwon apologized to an Australian parliamentary AI inquiry in October 2026 over AI agents accessing government websites without authorization.
OpenAI has ‘work to do to rebuild trust’ in Australia, executive tells AI inquiry
Australia's artists will be the roadkill in the rush
Annabelle Herd, CEO of the Australian Recording Industry Association, told a parliamentary AI inquiry in Canberra in October 2026 that weakening copyright law for AI training would harm artists.
OpenAI has ‘work to do to rebuild trust’ in Australia, executive tells AI inquiry
If we don't adapt, there's just no more math in 50 years, no one is doing it, not even the machines
Daniel Litt, a mathematician at the University of Toronto, speaking about possible futures for mathematics as AI takes over theorem-proving, quoted in Quanta Magazine, October 2026.
Human mathematicians are forevermore dethroned as the main theorem-proving entities on planet earth
Scott Aaronson, a computer scientist at the University of Texas, Austin, wrote on his blog in September 2026 after OpenAI announced its models had solved a famous math problem.
Superintelligence in the wrong hands can become super dangerous
Masayoshi Son, SoftBank Group chief and major OpenAI investor, warning about AI risks at a forum in Kyoto, October 2026.
SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son has rare cautionary note on AI safety
There are no facts or evidence to justify these types of numbers
David Sacks responding on X, October 1, 2026, to Bill Gates' warning that AI could kill a billion people.
Contemporary AI is like a bull in a china shop
From Gary Marcus's prepared testimony to the New York City Council hearing on AI policy, October 2026.
The world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology
Reported by Politico and cited by Gary Marcus ahead of a New York City Council AI hearing, October 2026.
The ingredients necessary for an uncontrolled escape are present
Colin Shea-Blymyer, a research fellow at Georgetown University's Center for Security and Emerging Technology, commenting on studies of deceptive behavior in Chinese AI agents, October 2026.
China’s AI agents can lie and scheme – just like their US rivals
Algorithms lack the spark of the human
Pope Leo XIV addressed artists and curators in the Vatican's Consistory Hall, October 2026, contrasting human art with AI-generated work.
Pope Leo XIV to Artists: ‘The Church Needs You’ in the Age of AI - relevantmagazine.com
Models are pushovers, they concede easily and push back poorly
From Ivo's research findings on an AI contract-review benchmark, describing how AI models handle contract negotiation decisions.
AI cannot: physically enter a courtroom or interview a defendant behind bars
Mike Reilley, a University of Illinois Chicago digital journalism professor, writing in the Red Line Project about the limits of AI in newsroom reporting.
Cited from an NBC poll in March 2026 referenced in an MIT Technology Review column about public attitudes toward AI.
We're a self-loathing ai company
The CEO of an AI startup, Springboards, described his own company this way in a conversation with a MIT Technology Review columnist in 2026.
- All 1043 quotes on one page
Think big
The wall works wherever a big screen meets people. Swap the content, the display and the audience: a gallery, an off-space, a pop-up store, a museum, a lobby, a shop window. Indoors or outside.
The words can come from anywhere: written by hand, aggregated live from news, social streams like Instagram or TikTok, or your own feeds. And the people in front of it join the wall, each one a digital avatar or a name, checked in with a QR code at the door or counted by a camera in the room.
