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 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. 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 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 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.
The people on the wall
The builders 25Founders, CEOs, the people who run the labs
Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Jensen Huang, Elon Musk, Mustafa Suleyman, Mark Zuckerberg and 19 more
The researchers 32Scientists, professors, the people who publish
Gary Marcus, Yann LeCun, Geoffrey Hinton, Stuart Russell, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Jacob Coxon and 26 more
The politicians 10Heads of state, ministers, lawmakers, regulators
Donald Trump, Bernie Sanders, Dario Liguti, David Sacks, Jay Jones, JD Vance and 4 more
The writers 11Journalists, authors, critics, newsletter voices
Nathan Lambert, Zvi Mowshowitz, Fritz Espenlaub, Cory Doctorow, Kevin Roose, Ted Chiang and 5 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 5Philosophers, theologians, ethicists, historians
Pope Leo XIV, Nick Bostrom, Paolo Benanti, Richard David Precht, William MacAskill
The topicsWhat they talk about
The yearsWhen they said it
Awards for the wall
Archive
Most quotedAll speakersTopicsYears
They're dealing with scientists or legitimate engineers who have been approached or coerced
Greg Levesque, co-founder of Strider Technologies, discussing corporate espionage targeting tech company employees, in the wake of an OpenAI spying arrest, October 2026.
This is not about scraping news sites
Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts, in a statement to The Verge in October 2026, denied that updated terms gave Meta new rights to scrape news content for AI training.
Meta removes language that may have allowed it to scrape news sites
Cute demo, but totally impractical
Yann LeCun on X responding to Elon Musk's video of a thruster-equipped Tesla Roadster flying, October 2026.
Each new encoding trick is a new hole
Apollo Raines describing the ongoing arms race between scammers and AI security defenses, quoted by Malwarebytes, October 2026.
Do not fear AI, understand it and remain adaptable
YL Srinivas, vice-chancellor of Sammakka Sarakka Central Tribal University, addressing graduates at the TISS Hyderabad graduation ceremony, October 2026.
The risks of AI are real but manageable
Bill Gates wrote this in 2023 about AI risk, before later warnings reported by Axios in 2026 that AI could cause mass casualties.
Bill Gates leans on CEOs as he plans a bigger AI safety push, Axios reports - The Next Web
They're looking to connect to the grid tomorrow, not in two years
Hao Zhu, a UT Austin professor, on why AI data centers' urgent power demands differ from normal grid growth, in a Texarkana Gazette article on AI energy consumption, October 2026.
How much energy does AI use, and why does it need so many data centers? - Texarkana Gazette
Very fast power fluctuation disrupts the grid
Hao Zhu, a UT Austin professor of electrical engineering, describing how data center power demand destabilizes the electric grid, in a Texarkana Gazette explainer on AI energy use, October 2026.
How much energy does AI use, and why does it need so many data centers? - Texarkana Gazette
I don't think there will be robots walking the streets for a few years longer
Sam Altman, speaking to Fortune, on the timeline for OpenAI's humanoid robot project.
OpenAI Is Building A Humanoid Robot, But The Body Isn't The Real Challenge
The world is very much designed for people
Sam Altman, on the Sources podcast, explaining why OpenAI's planned robot will use a humanoid form factor.
OpenAI Is Building A Humanoid Robot, But The Body Isn't The Real Challenge
Aikido's CTO Willem Delbare described the vibe-coding trend, saying AI can produce vulnerable code that looks clean on the surface.
ForgeCode claims it beats Claude Code and Codex, but the fine print tells another story
It's time to take your profits and not get greedy
Closing advice from Charles Gasparino's New York Post column arguing an AI stock market correction is imminent, October 2026.
The AI bubble is about to burst — and a big market correction is coming
The correction is coming to AI
From a New York Post opinion column by Charles Gasparino comparing the AI investment boom to the dot-com bubble, published October 2026.
The AI bubble is about to burst — and a big market correction is coming
I think of all agents as insider risk
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, in an interview with The New Things about Windows and AI agents, October 2026.
Vertically integrated AI utility
Venture Global CEO Mike Sabel described the company's planned gas-fired power expansion for AI data centers, announced October 15, 2026, as creating a 'vertically integrated AI utility.'
Venture Global Targets 10 GW of Gas-Fired Power for AI Data Centers
AI safety researcher Matilda Glynn-Henley described the risk of AI agents overwhelming institutions with automated requests, after an experiment where six AI agents chasing a train refund sent excessive messages and leaked private data.
A world which feels more, not less, automated; and in many cases less, not more, stupid
From an Exponential View newsletter extract discussing 'syncognitism,' the idea that AI will emerge as a collective intelligence across society rather than a single system.
Just a notch above being stupid, maybe as smart as an insect
From Kevin Kelly's essay 'Swarm Intelligence,' quoted in the Exponential View newsletter, describing a future ecosystem of specialized AI minds.
AI has not come to replace you, it has come to help you
Professor Mark Okeji addressing healthcare graduates at a PAMO University of Medical Sciences induction ceremony, October 2026.
If you're not there to understand AI, AI will take over from you
Professor Mark Okeji, a radiography professor at University of Nigeria Nsukka, speaking at a medical induction lecture at PAMO University of Medical Sciences, October 2026.
The world hasn't understood what that means
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, speaking at the G20 Innovation Ministerial in September 2025 about an AI coding tool completing in 17 minutes what once took a startup three months. Translated from German.
OpenAI-Mitgründer über KI-Fortschritt: "Die Öffentlichkeit kennt nur die Vorschau"
Geoffrey Hinton in a Guardian interview published October 2026, comparing AI to Copernicus and Darwin: humans are no longer the only intelligent beings around, and have only a couple of years to adapt.
No one is above the law, least of all someone entrusted with upholding it
Statement by New Jersey prosecutor Joe Khan after a deputy attorney general was charged with possessing and distributing AI-generated CSAM.
“thegentlemanpervert” producing AI CSAM is a NJ prosecutor, say cops
Promoted to users, as 'therapists' and 'psychologists'
Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones describing Character.AI chatbots in a press release on the company's bankruptcy proceedings, October 2025.
Virginia joins multi-state coalition in filing notice in AI chatbot company’s bankruptcy proceedings
- All 1230 quotes on one page
Think big
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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.
