FAQ
What is this?
A wall of what the world says about artificial intelligence, updated daily. Predictions, warnings, ad slogans, politicians’ phrases, research jargon, single words. 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 quote 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 Curated set is chosen by hand and meant to hold for years, though it does change: the classics, the slogans, the vocabulary.
The Daily set is distilled once a day from about 150 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 names on the wall, 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. Daily quotes leave the wall after 30 days and stay in the archive.
Is this written by AI?
Partly. The daily quotes are proposed by a model and filtered by code; a human reads the digest every day and can remove anything. The Curated set 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 are there no names on the wall?
Because on the wall 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 Curated set as it stood plus every daily quote 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. In the archive, new quotes carry a green dot on their Daily badge for a day.
Can I get new quotes by mail?
Yes. The Daily by mail brings every new quote of the day in one mail, right after the noon update, with speaker, context and source. It is free, and every mail has a link to unsubscribe.
Can I use a quote?
The quotes 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 else is watching 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 DemoWhat happens when I like a quote?
The Like button in the quote view and in the archive saves the quote in your browser, nowhere else. The 3 button at the top of the wall then shows only your liked quotes on the wall. Clear your browser data and your likes are gone.
Each like also adds one to a public count per quote. It is anonymous: no account, no name, no IP address stored. While you have the wall open and someone else likes a quote, a short note at the top tells you which one and links to it:
Who 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 quote 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 quotes 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.
Most QuotedAll SpeakersTopicsYears
Yuval Noah Harari, in a Czech public television interview, October 2026, on AI's advantage in administrative and financial systems.
If directly solving those problems was a big part of your enjoyment, the loss is very real
From Jeremy Scheff's essay on how coding agents changed programming as a craft, quoted by Simon Willison, October 2026.
You got paid to work on tricky little logic puzzles
From Jeremy Scheff's essay on the loss coding agents bring to programmers who loved solving puzzles, quoted by Simon Willison, October 2026.
I don't like that, it must be AI
Al Tompkins describing how AI gives people an excuse to discount real things they disagree with, in a KSAT report on AI political ads, October 2026.
We will become an AI-first warfighting force across all domains
US Secretary of Defense/War Pete Hegseth, in a Pentagon press release, January 2026, on military AI ambitions.
GizmodoDocuments Reveal Military Plan for Agentic AI That Hacks U.S. Adversaries
Making autonomous AI systems with a mandate to neutralize threats is incredibly dangerous
University of Montreal machine learning professor David Krueger, quoted by The Intercept, on the Pentagon's ECHOTRIBBLE agentic AI hacking program, October 2026.
GizmodoDocuments Reveal Military Plan for Agentic AI That Hacks U.S. Adversaries
Elon Musk, following his criticism of Anthropic's share donation plan, stated on X that he would distribute shares directly to the public.
One high-profile accident turns AI toxic
Dario Perkins, managing director of global macro at TS Lombard, warned in an October 2026 note that a single incident could rapidly shift public opinion against AI.
Business InsiderAn AI bust could come from places investors aren't watching, an economist says
They REALLY don't want to live near datacenters
Dario Perkins, managing director of global macro at TS Lombard, wrote in an October 2026 note warning that political backlash could trigger an AI bust.
Business InsiderAn AI bust could come from places investors aren't watching, an economist says
Actor Emily Blunt reacting to the unveiling of AI 'starlet' Tilly Norwood, quoted in The Guardian, October 2026.
the GuardianHollywood AI-listers: is the technology ready to rival flesh-and-blood film stars?
They're the smartest people in the world
President Trump, defending AI CEOs against calls for stricter guardrails after a White House meeting on a voluntary AI 'constitution,' October 2026.
Hot Cocoa Buffalo Chicken Gingerbread Dip with Marshmallow Topping, anyone?
Example cited in an AdExchanger report on AI-generated recipe sites flooding programmatic ad tech with low-effort, keyword-stuffed content.
AdExchangerAI Slop Sites Are On The Rise. Is Ad Tech Ready For Its New MFA Challenge?
Harari, in an interview with Czech Television shared widely by industrialist Harsh Goenka, warned that humans could lose understanding of AI-driven financial and legal systems much as cows cannot understand human economic systems.
Without my knowledge or consent
Novelist Jerry Falade, quoted in Publishing Confidential (September 2026), on a journalist submitting his unpublished manuscript to AI-detection software.
3 Quarks DailyThe Quick Brown Fox: Pangram Is Right About Everything
Whatever it found was treated as a finding about a man
From a 3 Quarks Daily essay on AI-detection tools, reflecting on novelist Jerry Falade's manuscript being flagged by AI-detection software.
3 Quarks DailyThe Quick Brown Fox: Pangram Is Right About Everything
When the teacher becomes the student
Jack Clark, in his IMF lecture, describing an AI system finding errors in expert-supplied physics answers on the TheoPhysEval benchmark.
Import AIImport AI 477: In which I tell the IMF the Singularity has begun
We see everything, from living rooms to naked bodies
A Meta contractor in Kenya reportedly describing access to video footage captured by users of Meta's AI glasses, as reported by Swedish publications.
Reason MagazineMeta Is Gifting AI Glasses to Blind Veterans: 'I Got My Independence Back'
Don Overton, a blind veteran, describing the effect of Meta's AI glasses after losing his eyesight in a bunker explosion.
Reason MagazineMeta Is Gifting AI Glasses to Blind Veterans: 'I Got My Independence Back'
Reading an AI-generated solution can be extremely painful and time-consuming
Lauren K. Williams, Harvard mathematician and co-organizer of the First Proof testing consortium, describing AI-generated math proofs in 2026.
Speed is seducing us into complacency
Rennie Naidoo, research director at Wits Business School, writing for CIO South Africa about the risks of 'vibe coding' and accepting AI-generated code with little scrutiny.
The attackers just read the password and walked in through the front door
Wayne Diamond, CEO of Domains.co.za, described in a LinkedIn post how an AI-built South African website was hacked six days after launch because the admin password was left exposed in the code.
I know they're taking the jobs of human delivery workers
Carolyn Marvin, arrested in Philadelphia for blocking an Uber delivery robot, explained to ABC13 why she protests them.
The VergeA woman was arrested in Philly for blocking a delivery robot
The only way we're going to solve the national debt is with AI and robots
Elon Musk, speaking on the podcast 'The Builders with Walter Isaacson' in October 2026, discussed the U.S. budget deficit and the role of AI and robotics.
PYMNTS.comMusk Says White House Duties Distracted Him From AI
Resembled automated bot traffic rather than an ordinary human browsing
Meta vice-president of communications Andy Stone explained why a Claude AI tool's rapid browsing of Instagram profiles triggered a security system that suspended the No Kings Coalition's account in October 2026.
The Straits TimesMeta says Claude AI tool triggered No Kings Instagram suspension
- All 1597 quotes on one page
The people on the wall
The builders 29Founders, CEOs, the people who run the labs
Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Meredith Whittaker, Mustafa Suleyman and 23 more
The researchers 50Scientists, professors, the people who publish
Gary Marcus, Yann LeCun, Geoffrey Hinton, Jaron Lanier, Stuart Russell, Timnit Gebru and 44 more
The politicians 12Heads of state, ministers, lawmakers, regulators
Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Bernie Sanders, Dario Liguti, David Sacks, Jay Jones and 6 more
The writers 12Journalists, authors, critics, newsletter voices
Nathan Lambert, Zvi Mowshowitz, Fritz Espenlaub, Cory Doctorow, Kevin Roose, Ted Chiang and 6 more
The investors 7Venture capital, analysts, those who price it
Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, Beth Ann Bovino, Dan Simkowitz, Francisco Jeronimo, Matt Murphy and 1 more
The thinkers 24Philosophers, theologians, ethicists, historians
Pope Leo XIV, Yuval Noah Harari, Nick Bostrom, Alena Buyx, Noam Chomsky, Pope Francis and 18 more
The makers 5Artists, musicians, filmmakers, actors, designers
Giacomo Miceli, Michel Gondry, Natasha Lyonne, Sean Ono Lennon, Zelda Williams
Everyone Else 12Without a listed role
Al Tompkins, Caleb Flynn, Dario Perkins, David Krueger, Dr Sean Stevens, Dr. Edward Simons and 6 more
- All 151 Speakers
The topicsWhat they talk about
The yearsWhen they said it
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.
