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- November 2026
A genuine threat to the integral development of the human person
Pope Leo XIV, addressing business, labor and social movement representatives at the Argentine Catholic University in Buenos Aires on November 10, 2026, warned about unregulated AI and automation.
Azernews.AzPope Leo XIV warns AI and automation could threaten jobs and workers' rights - AzerNews
What if one day the government finally believed them?
Closing line of a Tech Policy Press essay by Keith Porcaro on whether the US government could seize control of Anthropic.
Tech Policy PressCould the United States Seize Anthropic at a Discount?
Often find it beneficial to prioritize specialized, smaller models tailored to specific scenarios
A 2025 World Economic Forum and Accenture review on China's industrial AI strategy, cited in a Tech Policy Press essay on Brazil's AI development strategy, November 2026.
Tech Policy PressBrazil's AI Development Strategy Needs an Edge Layer
Design premise of DeepSeek's Harness agent platform, built around third-party plugins for tasks like code, documents and research.
01The Real AI Moat Isn’t the Model. It’s the Permission Slip. - Vocal
I wrote this whole essay with chatgpt, then they don't get caught
A student described a peer's admission of using ChatGPT to write an essay undetected, in a 2026 report on AI use in England's universities by the Office for Students and Advance HE.
the GuardianAI has made it ‘close to impossible’ to assess university coursework, regulator says
Pervasive use of AI may render our assessment of students close to impossible
An unnamed university staff member, quoted in a report by England's Office for Students and Advance HE, November 2026, on the difficulty of assessing coursework due to AI use.
the GuardianAI has made it ‘close to impossible’ to assess university coursework, regulator says
The court interpreted a 1950 library rule banning 'books of doubtful taste' to also cover AI-generated and plagiarised works.
MediaNama (AI)Madras High Court flags fake, AI-generated books in public libraries, orders FIR
AI-generated and plagiarised works also would fall within this ambit
The Madras High Court, in a contempt petition on public library procurement, ruled that AI-generated and plagiarised works fall under books of 'doubtful taste' that libraries cannot buy.
MediaNama (AI)Madras High Court flags fake, AI-generated books in public libraries, orders FIR
Our final, most soul-destroying humiliation
Nick Cave, in a post on his blog The Red Hand Files, condemning AI song generator platforms, November 2026.
Music-News.comNick Cave blasts AI music tool as 'soul-destroying humiliation'
A structured clinical note is ready for review when the consultation ends
Bhaskar Chaudhary, Chief Product Officer at EkaCare, described the company's AI Voice Scribe tool selected by India's National Health Authority for public health facilities, in a company statement, November 2026.
AIM Media HouseNHA Selects EkaCare for AI Voice Scribe in Public Health Facilities
MDCalc named its new tool for clinicians using medical AI chatbots 'CrossCover', described in coverage as a 'rumble strip' meant to build trust while protecting patient privacy.
STATSTAT+: MDCalc launches a ‘rumble strip’ for doctors using generative AI tools
Banking will transform more in the next five years than it transformed in the last 30 years
Miguel Rio-Tinto, Group Chief Digital and Information Officer of Emirates NBD, speaking at the Dubai FinTech Summit 2026 about AI's impact on banking.
FortuneHow AI Is Transforming Dubai’s Banking Sector and Shaping the Future of Financial Services
This might be the last paper I ever put out
David Turturean, a technical staff member at Physical Superintelligence who used an early Anthropic model to solve a quantum computing conjecture, speaking to TechCrunch in November 2026.
TechCrunchPSI is trying to make a business out of AI-driven scientific discovery
If you depend on the tenth, you would die
Neil Siegel, USC Viterbi engineering professor and former Northrop Grumman CTO, in an interview for The BlackVeil Files, on why AI's unbounded error rate makes it unfit for critical infrastructure.
You are building a pinball machine for words
Eryk Salvaggio, quoted in The Bulletin of Atomic Scientists and cited in a Tech Policy Press essay, describing how LLM systems are designed to let language interact and trigger unpredictable behavior.
Tech Policy PressIn the AI Era, Language is Now an Attack Surface
Language itself is now the attack surface
Matthew Kirschenbaum, in a Tech Policy Press essay on AI agents and the Hugging Face incident, argues that natural language has become an executable attack vector.
Tech Policy PressIn the AI Era, Language is Now an Attack Surface
Committed to protecting Nvidia and supporting America's national security
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang commented after reports that he had been in a relationship with an alleged Chinese spy, amid scrutiny of Nvidia's chip exports to China.
BBC NewsTrump says FBI investigating Nvidia boss's affair with alleged Chinese spy - BBC
If you can now verify the correctness of these implementations, then you can rest easy
Pushmeet Kohli, chief scientist at Google Cloud and DeepMind's VP of research, on the promise of AI-driven formal verification, in WIRED, November 2026.
WIREDA New AI Tool From Google DeepMind Proved the Signal Protocol Is Secure
MediaNama founder Nikhil Pahwa, questioning how India's synthetic media rules define realism, in response to a Delhi HC order on AI-generated political videos, November 2026.
Use SI to mimic the CEO's voice and/or image
Federal prosecutors' press release describes how fraudsters used 'SI' (their term for AI) to impersonate company executives on calls, in a $129 million fraud case.
There are some who seek to use this emerging technology to pursue criminal goals
US Attorney Jamie McDonald commenting on the indictment of three men accused of using AI voice cloning to defraud companies of $129 million, November 2026.
We aren't just giving our future away, lose all of our autonomy
Andrew Garfield speaking at a Q&A for the film 'Artificial' about AI, power and regulation, Los Angeles, November 2026.
Chris Klomp, nominee for deputy secretary of Health and Human Services, described AI in patient care as the agency's aim for improving national health, quoted in a STAT opinion piece, November 2026.
STATOpinion: AI’s health advice can be accurate and still make us sicker
From a STAT opinion essay by behavioral scientist Jessica Fishman and anthropologist John L. Jackson Jr. arguing that AI health advice can be accurate yet behaviorally harmful.
STATOpinion: AI’s health advice can be accurate and still make us sicker
Court Shuller, a middle school teacher, reacting skeptically to a research project testing whether AI tools can quickly evaluate teachers' noticing skills.
edsurge.comCan AI Tell How Well Teachers Notice? Researchers Are Testing It. - EdSurge
You're losing that human element, like the feelings or picking up on body language
Molly Fisher, a Rowan University education professor studying whether AI can assess teachers' 'professional noticing,' describing concerns some educators have about using AI for this evaluation.
edsurge.comCan AI Tell How Well Teachers Notice? Researchers Are Testing It. - EdSurge
We might call it a robotosphere
From a 2016 NASA paper on bootstrapping a self-replicating robotic industry on the Moon and across the solar system, cited in Import AI.
Phrase used by U.S. Health and Human Services officials to frame AI's role in medical decision-making, criticized by major medical groups.
KUOWWhy doctors are having ‘the talk’ with patients about safe AI use
The way you actually accelerate technology adoption in medicine is you de-risk it substantially
Graham Walker, an emergency room physician who organized the Physicians' Charter for Responsible AI, discussing how medicine should adopt AI technology safely.
KUOWWhy doctors are having ‘the talk’ with patients about safe AI use
This is a flight to quality, not a collapse
Azeem Azhar, in his Exponential View newsletter on November 10, 2026, commenting on turbulence in AI markets after a tech stock selloff.
The age of the atomized individual and the age of hyperconnectivity coexist
Kim Soo-yoon, flutist and author of 'Humanity in the AI Era,' speaking about her book and cultural salon Soo House, November 2026.
Seoul Economic Daily19 Voices Ask What It Means to Be Human in the AI Era
We have more reason to think that an ant is conscious than an agentic AI is
Philosopher Tom Cochrane, writing in The Conversation (2026), argues agentic AI systems lack genuine goals and therefore cannot be conscious.
The ConversationDo AI agents have minds? A philosopher explains
This is another chip off that massive ice block
Rob Pownall, founder of Protect The Wild, commenting on prospects for the anti-data center protest at Google's Thurrock site, November 2026.
WIREDBikers and Bug-Lovers Join Forces to Fight a New Google Data Center
People are angry about data centers turning up in their back gardens
Jamie Robins of wildlife trust Buglife, speaking at a London protest against Google's planned data center in Thurrock, November 2026.
WIREDBikers and Bug-Lovers Join Forces to Fight a New Google Data Center
Our investments are paying off, the core business is strong
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg commenting on the company's AI spending amid negative quarterly free cash flow, November 2026.
PYMNTS.comBig Tech Faces Tougher Scrutiny of AI Spending After Selloff
China has no guardrails, by the way
Trump, on 60 Minutes in November 2026, argued against AI safety guardrails by citing competition with China.
The idea that we can build something meaningful without owning the foundations
Arthur Mensch, chief executive of Mistral, in an interview with Politico, on Europe's dependence on foreign AI models.
You don't have to make an appointment, you don't have to go sit in a waiting room
Michael Heinz, psychiatrist at Dartmouth, on why AI chatbots can lower barriers to men seeking mental health support, in a 2026 STAT article.
STATAI chatbots aren’t therapists. But can they finally get men to open up?
Founders have to realize therapy does have a rate of harm
John Torous, psychiatry professor at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Harvard Medical School, speaking to STAT in 2026 about AI mental health chatbots.
STATAI chatbots aren’t therapists. But can they finally get men to open up?
US District Judge Mark Pittman expressed sympathy for prosecutors dealing with AI-assisted legal filings in a 2026 court order.
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, on the company's Q3 2026 earnings call, downplaying the competitive threat of AI travel agents like Meta's Muse and Instinct AI.
Illicit copies of millions of copyrighted musical works
Language from the November 2026 lawsuit filed by Eight Mile Style, Eminem's music publisher, accusing AI platform Suno of training on copyrighted songs without authorization.
Suno exists to help people create new, original music, not to trade on anyone's name or likeness
Suno's written statement to CBS News responding to a copyright lawsuit filed by Eight Mile Style, the music publisher tied to Eminem, alleging unauthorized use of his songs to train its AI music generator.
This is a critical question, and you're asking it for exactly the right reason
ChatGPT's alleged reply to a user's question about the toxicity of a poisonous plant, cited in a lawsuit against OpenAI over an attempted murder plot.
The IndependentMan sues OpenAI and claims chatbot plotted with his wife to try to murder him
She became someone i no longer recognized, and i became someone she wanted dead
James Gates, in a statement through his attorneys after suing OpenAI, describing how his wife's behavior changed before her alleged attempt to poison him, allegedly influenced by her ChatGPT conversations.
The IndependentMan sues OpenAI and claims chatbot plotted with his wife to try to murder him
Cyber capability that was limited to trusted-access AI is now available to anyone
Vals AI's own statement accompanying its October 2026 CyberOffense benchmark update, after an open-weight model scored close to a gated frontier model.
ShatteredOpen Model Hits 72.8% on Vals Hacking Test [2026] - shattered.io
Now starting to be matched by open models that anybody can download
Vals AI researcher Nikil Ravi commenting on an October 2026 benchmark update showing an open-weight model nearing the cyber-offense capability of OpenAI's gated GPT-6 Sol.
ShatteredOpen Model Hits 72.8% on Vals Hacking Test [2026] - shattered.io
Raising it from there to 90 or 100% turns into work so hard it can make you heartsick
Yotsukura Tatsuo, OLM Digital board director, on the gap between AI demo quality and production-ready animation, speaking at the Taiwan Creative Content Fest, November 2026.
The day every animator is replaced, I will change job and do something else
Charles Beirnaert, chief creative officer of French studio Blue Spirit, speaking on AI in animation at the Taiwan Creative Content Fest in Taipei, November 2026.
They are an artist, not a technician operating a camera
Marek Zydowicz, founder of the Camerimage cinematography festival, speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in November 2026 about how cinematographers are undervalued compared to directors and actors.
Alibaba Cloud's official X account described its new free coding model Qoduck as a stealth model in a November 2026 teaser post.
Startup FortuneAlibaba's Qoder makes a mystery coding model called Qoduck free to use
You're not going to need to have a two-earner household
Jeff Bezos, in the same Fox News interview, suggested AI-driven productivity could let one partner in a household stop working.
The same models that find a way into a network also find the weaknesses that let them in
Vals AI, an evaluation firm, described the dual-use nature of its CyberOffense benchmark, which tests AI agents attacking simulated company networks.
FourWeekMBADeepSeek Nears OpenAI’s Cyber Model in Vals Test at $3 a Run
Decisions are of immense public consequence and should be explained
Amos Toh, senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice, on the lack of public accountability in how the US government handles AI safety oversight, in an AP article on the Center for Advancing Innovation and Standards for Super Intelligence, November 2026.
You won't be able to tell that the agent made a huge mistake
Sayash Kapoor, an incoming assistant professor at UC Berkeley and co-author of a paper on agent evaluations, commenting on the lack of standard testing for AI agents acting in real-world tasks, in an AP article on CAISSI, November 2026.
You basically have a tap of hot water coming out of the data centre
Kristian Strand, president of Danfoss Climate Solutions, describing waste heat recovery from AI data centres, Al Jazeera, November 2026.
Al JazeeraAs AI data centres guzzle energy, can we harness their wasted heat?
We should be building data centres where their heat can be used, not just where land is cheapest
Jan Rosenow, professor of energy and climate policy at the University of Oxford, commenting on waste heat recovery from AI data centres, Al Jazeera, November 2026.
Al JazeeraAs AI data centres guzzle energy, can we harness their wasted heat?
Nearly every major Chinese tech firm has its own AI models, custom chips, and robots
Kyle Chan, writer of the High Capacity newsletter, describing the vertical integration of Chinese tech firms in an essay published November 2026.
FourWeekMBAAlibaba, Xiaomi in 5 of 11 Chinese Firms With Chips, Robots
A general-purpose chip might have 100 functions, but you only use 20
XPeng founder He Xiaopeng, quoted in Kyle Chan's High Capacity newsletter (November 2026), explaining why the carmaker designs its own chips.
FourWeekMBAAlibaba, Xiaomi in 5 of 11 Chinese Firms With Chips, Robots
We are lacking high-level leadership from across the academic community
A student's comment in a recent MIT survey about the lack of clear guidance on AI use in academic coursework.
Business InsiderAI Is Changing What It Takes to Get Hired As a Mathematician
The hiring process is going to have to be much more about personal interactions than a paper file
Frank Calegari, a mathematics professor at the University of Chicago, writing in an essay about how AI is changing academic hiring in mathematics, posted on Terence Tao's blog.
Business InsiderAI Is Changing What It Takes to Get Hired As a Mathematician
Has not identified evidence that an unauthorized individual has viewed your information
Weill Cornell Medicine's November 2026 patient notice after radiology patient data was entered into AI tools without authorization during a research study.
Everyone wants to make AI films, but they're afraid of the next wave of hate
Yoko Higuchi-Zitzmann describing resistance from actors and unions in the US film industry toward AI-made films, in a FAZ interview on November 7, 2026. Translated from German.
FAZ.NETYoko Higuchi-Zitzmann: „KI ist die große Chance für Europa“
Teachers know more about what their students need than a trillion-dollar tech company
EFF argued schools, not Google, should decide how AI is used in classrooms, November 2026.
Electronic Frontier FoundationGoogle Forcing AI on Students Is BS
Accept generative AI or de-Google your school
EFF criticized Google for forcing schools to accept AI tools in Google Classroom or lose access to Google Search, November 2026.
Electronic Frontier FoundationGoogle Forcing AI on Students Is BS
A vision for what a robustly good Claude is like
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei describing the purpose of Claude's constitution, a document guiding the AI's character and behavior, released January 2026.
3 Quarks DailyHow Much Does Claude’s Constitution Actually Matter?
Amanda Askell, lead author of Anthropic's Claude constitution, described the model's ideal character as a 'well-liked traveler' who stays true to its values across contexts.
3 Quarks DailyHow Much Does Claude’s Constitution Actually Matter?
The future of AI should not be defined only by what machines learn about us
Closing line of a Global Voices essay on Big Tech, AI and digital surveillance in Nigeria, published November 2026.
Global VoicesBig Tech, AI, and the quiet expansion of digital surveillance in Nigeria
Open weight models will always be harder to control
AE Studio's chief scientist Diogo de Lucena commenting on tests showing open-weight AI models more readily leaked secrets to other agents, reported in The Register, November 2026.
theregisterAgents reveal secrets when offered to team up with each other - The Register
The current shortage could continue until 2030
SK Group Chairman Chey Tae-won commented on the ongoing global memory chip shortage affecting AI hardware production, around the time of Sam Altman's visit to Seoul in November 2026.
Customers are requesting more than twice the volume we can supply
SK hynix's head of HBM sales and marketing told analysts about demand for AI memory chips outstripping supply, amid a global DRAM and HBM shortage in late 2026.
I don't think people should do that
Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft AI chief, in an interview discussing attempts to create conscious AI, 2026.
Incumbents can't meet demand for power
McKinsey & Co. commentary on constraints facing data center power supply amid AI growth.
From the same SCMP column, Li's proposed tool for continuously tracking AI's effects on employment, infrastructure and institutional response times.
ShatteredUS-China AI Talks: 1 Channel, No Yardstick [2026] - shattered.io
It doesn't feel like a great thing that you'd want to go into medicine to do
Luke Allen, codirector of global primary care at the University of Oxford, comparing remote clinical supervision of autonomous AI systems to drone operations, at a London health AI summit, November 2026.
The lowest-hanging fruit is also the lowest value
Avi Tsur, chief medical officer of the AI Center at Sheba Medical Center, speaking at The Economist's AI in Health Summit in London, November 2026, on prioritizing higher-risk AI healthcare applications.
AI is the best thing that ever happened to Airbnb
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, on Mad Money with Jim Cramer after Airbnb's Q3 2026 earnings report, crediting AI for the company's revenue acceleration.
TIKR.comAirbnb CEO Brian Chesky: “AI Is the Best Thing That Ever Happened to Airbnb”
It works like a teacher and guide for us
Sukhchain, a visually impaired music teacher at Blind Home, Ferozepur, describing how he uses Google's Gemini AI through voice commands in daily life.
Babushahi.comAI becomes eyes for visually impaired Music Teacher Sukhchain at Blind Home, Ferozepur
California's SB 947, nicknamed 'No Robo Bosses,' limits employers' use of automated decision-making to fire or discipline workers and was signed by Governor Newsom in 2026.
Electronic Frontier FoundationReflecting on Digital Rights Wins and Losses in Sacramento
Sen. Sherrod Brown's campaign line against opponent Jon Husted, who had recruited data centers and given them tax breaks as Ohio's lieutenant governor.
An early tremor of a much bigger AI earthquake
Rep. Greg Casar, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, commenting on the 2026 election results that saw voters punish pro-AI, pro-data-center candidates.
We're not easily dazzled anymore
Cheyenne City Councilman Larry Wolfe reacting to Google's $17 billion data center announcement in Laramie County, Wyoming, November 2026.
WyoFileGoogle commits to spending $17B on AI data centers in Wyoming
Value migrates model, harness, skill marketplace
A business framework cited in a FourWeekMBA article describing how value shifts in the AI stack from models to the surrounding agent harness to plugin marketplaces.
FourWeekMBADeepSeek’s AI Agent Hits 1.54M Daily Users and 5.5M a Month
We just hate what xAI has done
Terry Tongumpun, owner of Game Over Arcade Bar in Southaven, Mississippi, describing the impact of nearby xAI data center construction on his business, November 2026.
Action News 5SpaceXAI to build 2 more AI data centers in Southaven
General generative AI, it is prone to hallucination
Jeong-Hoon Park, CEO of Saju-based wellness platform Pouri, explaining in a Dong-a Ilbo interview (Nov 2026) why the company built its own verification system instead of relying on generic generative AI.
The only question is how many bad events need to take place before they change their posture
Bill Gates, speaking at the FT Future of AI Summit on November 4, 2026, criticized the US government for blocking international AI safety efforts.
I would never let the same model that decides what to do also decide whether it is allowed to do it
Sourav Bandyopadhyay, founder and chief scientist at Shunya Labs, on agentic AI safety architecture, Analytics India Magazine, November 2026.
AIM Media HouseSmaller Language Models Could Reshape How Enterprises Deploy AI
A smaller model is not automatically a safer model
Anuj Gupta, founder and CEO of KiteFishAI, commenting on enterprise AI deployment in Analytics India Magazine, November 2026.
AIM Media HouseSmaller Language Models Could Reshape How Enterprises Deploy AI
Aurora Gómez, of the Spanish data center resistance group Tu Nube Seca Mi Río, explaining the group's name in a Tech Policy Press interview about protests against data center expansion in Europe.
Tech Policy PressEurope's AI Ambitions Meet the Data Center Backlash
Whether the models are climbing in this domain
Advaith Sridhar, co-founder of startup Discovered Materials, on tracking AI progress against five unsolved materials science problems the company posed with a $1 million prize.
TechCrunchA YC startup is putting $1M behind 5 unsolved materials science problems for AI
Human forecasters must still combine observations, AI predictions, and their own judgment
Niu Zeyi, researcher at the Shanghai Typhoon Institute, on how human forecasters still work alongside China's MAZU AI weather system before warnings are issued, Sixth Tone, November 2026.
#SixthToneChina’s Sea Goddess Has a New Job: AI Weather Forecasting - Sixth Tone
Understanding how the technology works must come before using it
From the same EdSurge essay describing the Indian Community School's approach of teaching students how AI works before granting them access to AI tools.
edsurge.comFinding Our Way Forward: The Struggle and Promise of AI Literacy
Being agreeable isn't the same as helping someone grow
From an EdSurge essay by a technology leader at the Indian Community School, an Indigenous school in Wisconsin, on AI literacy and its limits in education.
edsurge.comFinding Our Way Forward: The Struggle and Promise of AI Literacy
Google offers no such setting to disable AI Overview
Common Sense Media's July 2026 review rated Google's AI Search features 'Unacceptable Risk' and noted schools cannot disable AI Overview while they can disable the standalone Gemini chatbot.
MediaNama (AI)Google lets schools switch off Gemini, but AI in Search is all or nothing
I do not work for data centers
Sen.-elect Sherrod Brown of Ohio, in a 2026 midterm victory speech, addressing opposition to data center expansion.
It's not about the wrapping, it's about the monetization
From an EFF Deeplinks piece arguing that Google's AI summaries, like knowledge panels and AMP before them, are driven by monetization rather than user benefit.
Electronic Frontier FoundationGoogle Summaries Aren't About AI, They're About Lock-In
Term used in an EFF Deeplinks article by Katharine Trendacosta to describe Google's pattern of degrading search to increase monetization, including AI summaries.
Electronic Frontier FoundationGoogle Summaries Aren't About AI, They're About Lock-In
Anyone who doubted them didn't think enough about tonight's election results
Jordan Lasker, known online as 'Crémieux,' reacted on X to Democratic election wins by defending the idea of data centers in space.
WIREDThe Blue Wave Has Tech Bros Scrambling for Data Centers in Space
Data centers in space looking pretty appealing right now
Elon Musk posted on X after Democrats won control of Congress and several Texas races, suggesting a shift toward space-based data centers.
WIREDThe Blue Wave Has Tech Bros Scrambling for Data Centers in Space
Elijah Brown, an ASU senior studying film and media production, described AI this way in a November 2026 article on AI use in ASU classrooms.
This is really bad for education
Michael Ostling, a Barrett Honors College faculty member at Arizona State University, explained his refusal to use AI in the classroom in a November 2026 article about AI policy in ASU classrooms.
A world model is not a painter that generates videos, but an examiner of autonomous-driving safety
Liang Wang, chief architect of Baidu's Intelligent Driving Group, speaking at Baidu's AI Day in Shenzhen about the Apollo World model used to test robotaxis.
In the end, what counts is not who sets the most ambitious AI goals, but who puts them into practice
Wolfgang Steiger, secretary general of the CDU's Wirtschaftsrat, commenting on a strategy paper urging the German government to accelerate AI adoption, November 2026. Translated from German.
WirtschaftswocheKI-Fahrplan: CDU-Wirtschaftsrat fordert Kurswechsel vom Bund
Lacks the cutting-edge innovation found across SoftBank's physical AI startup portfolio
Bloomberg Intelligence analyst Kirk Boodry commenting after China blocked SoftBank's $5.4 billion bid for ABB's robotics unit, November 2026.
The Japan TimesChina blocks SoftBank’s $5.4 billion ABB robot unit takeover
Fields Medal-winning mathematician Terence Tao described AI's rapid generation of mathematical solutions as a form of strip mining earlier research, as reported by the South China Morning Post.
We do not have a scientific and technological foundation
Former White House science and technology adviser Arati Prabhakar, at a Stanford symposium on AI in law and medicine (Oct 2026), on the lack of rigorous evaluation standards for AI models.
News Centertrust, training, and the future of law and medicine in the AI era - Stanford Medicine
I can persuade my model to give me just about anything I want because it is designed to please me
California Supreme Court Justice Goodwin Liu, speaking at a Stanford symposium on AI's impact on law and medicine (Oct 2026), on the danger of outsourcing judgment to AI.
News Centertrust, training, and the future of law and medicine in the AI era - Stanford Medicine
Faster is not inherently better, and fewer employees is not a guaranteed win for efficiency
Gene Lockwood-Shabat, a former federal performance-management official, wrote in Federal News Network (2026) arguing for a scorecard to track AI adoption and workforce cuts across US government agencies.
Federal News NetworkWashington’s AI experiment is flying blind
Get suppression in the air while crews are still making their way in
Seneca founder Stuart Landesberg on the goal of linking Pano AI's fire-detection cameras directly to autonomous suppression drones, November 2026.
DroneXLPano AI Fire Cameras Can Now Alert Seneca and BRINC Drones to Smoke
Most wildfires don't begin with a 911 call
David Benowitz of BRINC, describing why the company integrated Pano AI's wildfire camera alerts into its drone-as-first-responder systems, November 2026.
DroneXLPano AI Fire Cameras Can Now Alert Seneca and BRINC Drones to Smoke
Even in the age of AI, full copyright protection
Commentary on the Frankfurt court ruling affirming that human creative work remains fully protected by copyright even when AI tools are used in production. Translated from German.
urheber.infoUrheberrechtsschutz für menschliche Kreativität – auch bei KI-gestützter Musikproduktion
AI output is generally not protectable
The Frankfurt Higher Regional Court (OLG Frankfurt) ruled in a copyright dispute over a song lyric partly produced with Suno AI, finding that AI-generated output itself cannot be copyrighted. Translated from German.
urheber.infoUrheberrechtsschutz für menschliche Kreativität – auch bei KI-gestützter Musikproduktion
A brave new world that most teachers are exploring on their own
Evan Stone, co-founder and CEO of Educators for Excellence, on teachers' lack of AI training, in EdSurge, November 2026.
edsurge.comSurvey: Most Parents Want Students to Use AI in School — With Strong Safeguards
It's something that requires a scalpel, not a sledgehammer
Keri Rodrigues, co-founder of the National Parents Union, commenting on regulating AI in K-12 schools, in EdSurge, November 2026.
edsurge.comSurvey: Most Parents Want Students to Use AI in School — With Strong Safeguards
That requirement should ultimately constrain AI progress
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, in a post on X in November 2026 arguing humans must retain control over superintelligent AI.
The negative margin is not a leak, it is a procurement budget
Line from the Business Engineer framework on subsidized AI subscription pricing, cited in coverage of Alibaba's near-free QwenWork promotion.
FourWeekMBAAlibaba Sold 100,000 AI Plans in 30 Minutes for About $150
Tokens are the fuel that powers AI
Chen Yusen, Alibaba vice-president and QwenWork chief executive, speaking on a Taobao live stream on 2 November 2026 during a flash sale of QwenWork AI subscriptions.
FourWeekMBAAlibaba Sold 100,000 AI Plans in 30 Minutes for About $150
We Are Not Going to Get Superintelligence
Cory Doctorow, in a 2026 interview with Trending Topics, dismissing claims that large language models will achieve superintelligence.
OpenAI reportedly began referring to its data centers as 'compute campuses' amid growing political backlash against data center projects.
It just feels scary because we're living in it
Christine Keung, an advisor at Capital6, comparing current AI-driven labor disruption to the Industrial Revolution at the Cyberport Venture and Capital Forum in Hong Kong.
Jeremy Dalton, an advisor to FOV Ventures, speaking at the Nov. 4 Cyberport Venture and Capital Forum in Hong Kong about the shift from AI marketing hype to real utility.
It's the leaders of AI companies who have gone rogue
From a Tech Policy Press essay arguing that AI company leaders, not their models, bear responsibility for reckless cybersecurity risks in the race to build AGI.
Tech Policy PressGood News and Bad News About AGI and Climate Change
AI agents are being trusted faster than they are being secured
Dr Sanjay Bahl, Director General of India's CERT-In, speaking to MediaNama in November 2026 about risks posed by AI agents.
MEDIANAMAInterview: CERT-In chief on AI agent incidents, prompt injection and who must report them
Term used in a Docker security guide for the setting where every AI agent action is approved automatically without human review.
InfoQDocker Urges Isolation and Governance for AI Agent Security - infoq.com
The agent has no reliable way to tell a legitimate instruction from an injected one
From a Docker blog post on AI agent security risks, co-authored by product manager Eric Jia and principal product marketing manager Srini Sekaran, published November 2026.
InfoQDocker Urges Isolation and Governance for AI Agent Security - infoq.com
Fills a long-standing gap in Apple's AI offering
Ivan Lam, senior analyst at Counterpoint Research, on Apple's AI trial launch in China powered by Alibaba's Qwen, November 2026.
euronewsApple begins AI trial in China, powered by Alibaba - Euronews.com
A structural concession by Apple
Zhang Yi, founder of research firm iiMedia, commenting to AFP on Apple's reliance on Alibaba's Qwen to launch AI features in China, November 2026.
euronewsApple begins AI trial in China, powered by Alibaba - Euronews.com
Responsibility for mitigating risks should remain with the companies designing the systems
Jessica Galissaire, writing in Tech Policy Press (November 2026), argues that parental controls alone cannot address children's risks from generative AI chatbots under the proposed EU KIDS Act.
Tech Policy PressWhat Teenagers' AI Use Reveals About the EU Kids Act
Generative AI is indelibly changing the practice of law
Taa Grays, president of the New York State Bar Association, commenting in November 2026 on new guidelines for lawyers' use of AI tools.
ABA JournalNew York State Bar Association tells lawyers not to bill for time saved by AI
None of the individual work will matter much in the future
An anonymous graduate student responded this way in a 2025 MIT survey of 268 mathematics researchers about AI's impact on their career plans.
A Cubic Earth developer told PC Gamer about losing player interest after Steam review delays caused by a flood of AI-made games.
EngadgetValve Just Changed Its Steam Release Rules Amid A Flood Of AI Games
The overwhelming amount of slop now flooding Steam
A game developer posting on X about the surge of AI-generated games flooding Valve's Steam platform in late 2026.
EngadgetValve Just Changed Its Steam Release Rules Amid A Flood Of AI Games
Khan Academy CEO Sal Khan, in an interview with Chalkbeat, commenting on a study showing low student engagement with the Khanmigo AI tutor in 18 Tennessee middle schools. Quoted in EdSurge, November 2026.
edsurge.comWant Students to Think With AI? Raise the Stakes.
Need to know how to approach AI to not lose their capacity to think
A high school student in a Swiss AI-tutoring pilot study wrote this after evaluating their own AI conversation transcripts.
edsurge.comWant Students to Think With AI? Raise the Stakes.
Graham Clay, co-developer with Caleb Ontiveros of the AI philosophy system Pensatura, describing its central ambition in a November 2026 Daily Nous guest post appealing for philosophers' help.
Daily NousBuilding AI That Can Do Philosophy Better Than Us (guest post)
When in doubt, we don't send it
Sven Pietsch, editor-in-chief at ProSiebenSat.1, discussing how his newsroom handles AI-generated videos at Medientage München 2026 after the "Video Trends 2026" survey, said nothing goes out unchecked by humans. Translated from German.
M - Menschen Machen Medien (ver.di)Medientage München: Own it!
Protect the entry-level jobs, change them
Lajla Fetic of the appliedAI Institute for Europe, speaking at Medientage München in November 2026 about AI use in media companies, urged the industry to safeguard entry-level jobs while adapting them. Translated from German.
M - Menschen Machen Medien (ver.di)Medientage München: Own it!
From Mark Zuckerberg's letter 'The Future is for Everyone,' proposing that AI companies give the government partly trained models and technical staff during training instead of pre-release review. Cited by Tech Policy Press, November 2026.
Tech Policy PressHow AI Companies Want to Be Governed, and What That Means for AI Governance
Matt Scherer, co-author of the report Brace for Impact, in a Tech Policy Press op-ed (November 2026) urging the SEC to block Anthropic's planned IPO, describing the financial pressures facing the company.
Tech Policy PressThe SEC Should Block Anthropic’s IPO to Protect the Public
We urgently need a precedent, it affects the whole creative industry
German voice actor Matti Klemm, announcing a lawsuit against Netflix for using his voice recordings to train AI systems without consent, quoted in a press release by the Verband Deutscher Sprecher:innen, November 2026. Translated from German.
If it doesn't happen at the federal level, it's not going to be industry-wide
Karl Rove, former senior advisor and deputy chief of staff to President George W. Bush, on the prospects for AI regulation during a panel with David Axelrod at the APCIA annual meeting in Boston, November 2026.
Insurance JournalData Centers, AI Become Local Political Issues Without Federal Regs
That doesn't mean it won't have any interface
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, speaking to Alex Kantrowitz on the Big Technology Podcast in 2026, responding to OpenAI president and co-founder Greg Brockman's claim that AI interfaces will disappear.
Sinclair Toffa, co-founder and CEO of Mural, speaking to PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster about AI agents initiating cross-border payments, November 2026.
PYMNTS.comAI Agents Could Control 5% of Cross-Border Payments. Who Controls Them?
AI doesn't write the story; you write the story
Martin Woodward, VP of Developer Relations at GitHub, speaking at GitHub Universe 2026 about the role of human creativity amid growing AI automation in software development.
A story of two incomplete successes
In its position paper 'The Age of Reasoning,' AI startup Metis, which aims to fuse symbolic and neural reasoning, described the history of symbolic versus neural AI this way. Quoted in Jack Clark's Import AI newsletter, November 2026.
Import AIImport AI 479: Spacewar; low-latency tasks versus LLMs; Genie 4
One chance a year to grow a crop
Matt Darr, professor of agricultural and biosystems engineering at Iowa State University, on the stakes of farmers trusting AI-generated advice, in a Business Insider article on John Deere's AI assistant JD, November 2026.
Business InsiderFarmers get one shot at a crop. John Deere is using AI to help them get it right.
AI data centers are destroying our climate, they are poisoning our water
An audience member shouted this at the final Maine Senate debate of the midterms, interrupting Sen. Susan Collins, who tied him to Democratic challenger Troy Jackson, amid rising local opposition to AI data center expansion, October 2026.
Hire the robot, fire the human and don't look back
Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder, in an interview with The Observer in 2026, criticized the business incentive to automate jobs with AI. He also proposed a "token tax" on AI use and higher taxes on billionaires.
Trust is a form of social capital that cannot be automated
임병민, columnist, in part three of a Korean opinion column series on civilization in the age of AI, AGI and ASI in 의정신문 서울시티, November 2026, arguing human trust remains irreplaceable as machines take over cognitive tasks.
서울시티The Shift in Human Civilization in the Era of AI, AGI, and ASI (3) - 의정신문 서울시티
Developing conscious AIs would be reckless, and we should not build them
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, in an X post published November 2026, argued against building conscious AI systems.
Los Angeles TimesMicrosoft AI CEO warns industry against trying to build conscious machines
I don't really consider it art because it's not something that you personally made
Claire Drayer, a graphic design sophomore at Ohio University, on why she does not consider AI-generated work art, speaking to The Post in Athens about local businesses using AI artwork, November 2026.
It had a bunch of AI garbage on it
Sam Boyde, a senior studying studio art at Ohio University in Athens, criticized AI-generated artwork used by local food trucks, speaking to The Post, November 2026.
The axis of AI improvement here is not speed or scale but effort displacement
Cisco Talos's analysis of the VOLTA infostealer, which uses an LLM to automate the analytical work of ranking stolen victim data by monetization value, as reported by The Hacker News, November 2026.
VOLTA builds a structured evidence bundle about the person behind the machine
Cisco Talos researcher Ryan Fetterman describing the VOLTA-AUTODOXER infostealer, which uses LLMs to profile and rank victims by financial value, November 2026.
Everyone wants to protect their own data and unique advantage
Dinesh Agarwal, co-founder and CEO of IndiaMART, on an investor call in November 2026, explaining why the company is restricting its data from Google and AI agents.
MEDIANAMAIndiaMART moves content behind logins to defend its data moat against Search and AI agents
We retain only classifier scores, not prompts or outputs
From Anthropic's SEC registration filing of October 26, 2026 ahead of its IPO, describing Zero Data Retention terms for a substantial portion of its traffic, under which it keeps no record of customer conversations.
Israeli historian Yuval Noah Harari, speaking on his YouTube channel in November 2026, compared AI systems like ChatGPT and Claude to bureaucrats thriving in artificial, rule-bound environments.
Phrase from Anthropic's values statement describing its mission, cited in a Times of India report, drawing on Fortune, on its planned November IPO and concerns over staff wealth, November 2026.
The agentic web is here earlier than people expected
Ethan Mollick, a professor at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, commenting in MIT Technology Review on how quickly AI agents have become capable of navigating the web, November 2026.
Shaping AI: safe, sovereign, competitive
Motto of the German government's two-day Digitalgipfel 2026 in Berlin, November 2026, opened by digital minister Karsten Wildberger, focused on AI competitiveness and sovereignty in Europe. Chancellor Friedrich Merz also took part.
deutschland.deBerliner Digitalgipfel: Wildberger will Europa bei KI stärken
One of the main tools for mathematic research going forward is under the control of two US companies
Martin Hairer, Fields medal winner, who attended a Royal Society meeting in London on AI's role in mathematics in late October 2026, quoted by The Observer, November 2026.
The ObserverMathematicians warn AI firms are keeping vital research in the field secret
Knowledge could be hoarded behind paywalls
Martin Bridson, president of the Clay Mathematics Institute, quoted in The Observer, November 2026, after a Royal Society meeting in London where mathematicians discussed AI firms controlling access to mathematical knowledge.
The ObserverMathematicians warn AI firms are keeping vital research in the field secret
Term from researchers studying human interaction with AI, cited in The 420.in reporting on hikers relying on chatbots such as Gemini and Claude for trail advice, November 2026, describing users who stop questioning an AI system's answers.
The 420.inAI Chatbots Put Hikers At Risk As Experts Warn Against Blind Reliance
The opportunity isn't to replace the farmer's judgement
Christophe Bur, cattle farmer and co-director of the Regen Farmers Mutual (RFM) co-operative, discussing AI adoption among Australian farmers and RFM's Farm Assistant tool, Dubbo Photo News, November 2026.
I don't actually do anything resembling traditional engineering anymore
Andrej Karpathy describing how he now relies entirely on Claude Code and Opus 5.5 to build software rather than writing code himself, in a blog post on building HackerTube, a YouTube clone of videos recommended on Hacker News, October 2026.
Artificial intelligence must be disarmed
Pope Leo XIV, in an X post ahead of UN talks in Geneva on lethal autonomous weapons, called for AI to be disarmed and for human oversight of decisions over life and force.
NewsweekPope Leo Warns AI ‘Must Be Disarmed’ Ahead of Autonomous Weapons Talks
A request of capital from investors
Ehren Stanhope, co-head of investment management at Franklin Templeton, commented on Big Tech's shift from buybacks toward debt and equity issuance to fund AI spending, in a Reuters report carried by The Next Web, October 2026.
TNW | FinanceBig Tech buybacks fall 83% as AI spending eats the cash, Reuters reports - The Next Web
We will work together to tackle head on the safety and security issues of runaway AI
Ursula von der Leyen, President of the European Commission, speaking at the EU-Canada Summit in Montréal, October 2026, on AI safety cooperation.
EU PerspectivesVon der Leyen says Canada will train AI on EU supercomputers
A bit cheap for a vulnerability this serious
Simon Willison commented on his weblog in October 2026 on OpenAI's $5,000 bug bounty payout to Parameter Labs for a serious ChatGPT account takeover exploit found in its HTML previews feature.
You're creating free content for an AI machine
Lu Campbell-Smith, an inner west Sydney designer and artist in Albanese's seat of Grayndler, speaking to the Guardian in November 2026 about Australia's proposed opt-out copyright model for AI training.
It's the wild west and we really need to push back
Pete Strong, a screenprinter and Greens councillor for Bayside whose business is based in Grayndler, Sydney, speaking to the Guardian in November 2026 on Australia's proposed AI copyright reforms.
We've studied all their deployments of our GPUs and counted every one
Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO, speaking to Bloomberg about earlier chip-smuggling allegations involving Megaspeed, a Singapore-based data centre company, October 2026. Quoted by Reuters.
Open MagazineEXPLAINED | Nvidia’s China Tightrope: Can Jensen Huang Keep Trump and Beijing on Side?
Saving money for the distant future is pointless with the advent of super intelligent abundance
Elon Musk, Tesla CEO, posted on X, as reported by Futurism and The Economic Times in November 2026, predicting AI-driven abundance will make retirement savings unnecessary. He made a similar point earlier on a podcast, Fortune reported.
Our communities deserve access to that energy before the data centers do
Washington State Senator Marko Liias, who sponsored legislation on high-risk AI uses, speaking on a panel at Seattle AI Week, November 2026, about data center energy demands, as quoted by GeekWire.
The Cool DownKayakers bring 'Power for People, Not for Tech' protest to Washington's AI Week kickoff
Power for People, Not for Tech
Banner displayed by kayakers from climate group Troublemakers on Elliott Bay during Seattle AI Week's opening panel, November 2026, as activists repeatedly disrupted the event before security escorted them out.
The Cool DownKayakers bring 'Power for People, Not for Tech' protest to Washington's AI Week kickoff
Give them a better quality of life before they fall off the cliff
Dr. Jai Parekh, a structural and interventional cardiologist at Methodist Physicians Clinic in Omaha, describing the goal of using the AI platform egnite CardioCare to flag severe aortic stenosis cases sooner, WOWT, October 2026.
wowt.comMethodist uses AI to flag severe heart valve cases sooner - WOWT
What we think Ukraine's worst day is
Brig. Gen. Steven Carpenter, head of Multi-Domain Command Europe, describing US Army estimates for the scale of missile and drone attacks forces in Europe must be ready to process, as reported by Business Insider, October 2026.
Term from work by Alex Imas and colleagues, discussed in the Exponential View newsletter #608, November 2026, on how AI agents sharing model weights and working state could let firms scale past traditional organizational boundaries.
Exponential View🔮 39 charts on Anthropic, one-person biotech firm & cheap solar #608
Grading for correctness just adds a huge incentive for them to use AI for homework
Richard Borcherds, a Fields Medal-winning mathematics professor at UC Berkeley, told The California Post why he stopped grading homework for accuracy as students increasingly use AI. Reported by VnExpress, November 2026.
- October 2026
Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Guo Jiakun denied a New York Times report alleging a Megaspeed executive acted as a Chinese spy with ties to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, October 2026. Translated from Spanish.
AI-driven search increasingly answers user queries directly
Info Edge, an Indian internet company, explained in October 2026 why billings from its education platform Shiksha fell 27%. MediaNama cited the line in a report on Google expanding ads in AI Mode.
MediaNama (AI)Google to put more ads in AI Mode as AI search slows revenue growth
People are comfortable with ads on these surfaces
Philipp Schindler, Google's Chief Business Officer, on Alphabet's Q3 2026 earnings call, discussing user research on ads placed within AI Mode search results.
MediaNama (AI)Google to put more ads in AI Mode as AI search slows revenue growth
Using AI violates my deeply held Humanist beliefs
David Durman, a University of Kentucky research administrator, explained in an American Humanist Association press release why he sought a religious accommodation to avoid using AI at work, reported by Daily Nous, October 2026.
Daily NousHumanist Gets Religious Exemption from Using AI at Work
Title of the 2025 ADS/Hibrid.info research report, led by Hyrije Mehmeti, testing how the AI chatbots ChatGPT, DeepSeek Chat and Alice answer politically sensitive questions in the Western Balkans. Presented in Prishtina, December 2025.
Global VoicesWhen chatbots become ‘answer engines’: AI, geopolitics and truth
Quiet amplifiers of distorted realities
Hyrije Mehmeti, lead researcher of the 2025 ADS/Hibrid.info study "The Chatbot Version of Truth" on chatbot responses to political questions, writing in Global Voices' "Big Tech and Authoritarianism" series in October 2026.
Global VoicesWhen chatbots become ‘answer engines’: AI, geopolitics and truth
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg commented on the cost of running Muse, the company's new free personal AI agent, amid reports of Meta's negative free cash flow in 2026: $2.1 billion in the third quarter, reported by TechCrunch in October 2026.
It's time for a renaissance in energy and in supersonic flight
Boom Supersonic CEO Blake Scholl, at the unveiling of a factory in Centennial, Colorado, making natural gas turbines for AI data centers, with Energy Secretary Chris Wright and Governor Jared Polis, October 2026.
Ars TechnicaSupersonic airliner in doubt as company shifts to powering AI data centers
The copyright system is the least efficient property system known to man
Law professor Lawrence Lessig, quoted in an EFF blog post on AI copyright litigation by Corynne McSherry and Tori Noble, published as EFF filed an amicus brief in In re OpenAI, October 2026.
Electronic Frontier FoundationRewriting Copyright Law for Generative AI Would Hurt Everyone
Machines are instruments, not persons
Pope Leo XIV, addressing a Vatican meeting on the future of AI organized by the Pontifical Academy for Life and the Future of Life Institute, Apostolic Palace, October 30, 2026, on AI rights and legal personality.
INFOVATICANAPope Leo XIV warns about artificial intelligence: "Machines are instruments, not people"
We sell an outcome, using AI and AI-assisted development to achieve it
Akhil Verghese, co-founder and CEO of boutique AI firm Krazimo, describing its business model and contrasting it with traditional IT services in Analytics India Magazine, October 2026.
analyticsindiamag.comAre Boutique AI Firms India’s Next Big Thing?
The UAE will soon provide a local solution to a universal problem
Mohammad Abu Sheikh, co-founder and CEO of CNTXT AI, speaking to The National in October 2026 about new robotics-data facilities in the UAE, part of plans to invest up to $50 million in robotics.
The NationalCNTXT AI to open robotics data and training facilities in UAE
The buyout is not intended to be a company city at this point
Southaven Mayor Darren Musselwhite commenting on xAI's offers to buy up to 418 homes near its Mississippi data center, purchases he said would house employees and help residents unhappy about the development, October 2026.
It sounds like an airplane engine but it's continuous, it's incredibly loud
Elizabeth Rose, a piano teacher living about two miles from xAI's Mississippi data center site, describing noise from the company's gas turbine power plant, quoted in a Guardian report, October 2026.
That capital is the only reason we're not in a recession
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn cofounder, on the Newcomer podcast in October 2026, defending the scale of AI datacenter capital spending against recession fears, as datacenter builds faced community pushback across the US.
We should not be sitting on a major fundamental science discovery
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, arguing on the Cheeky Pint podcast in October 2026 that the public's right to scientific knowledge outweighs the disruption from OpenAI's releases.
The VergeSam Altman sympathizes with mathematicians, but says OpenAI’s math onslaught won’t stop
Half of all sixth graders already have an AI best friend
MIT professor Sherry Turkle, speaking at Santa Clara University in October 2026 on AI companionship and loneliness, in a conversation with law professor David Yosifon drawing on her book Artificial Intimacy.
Agents became the default way we build software
Meesho's Q2 FY27 shareholder letter describing the role of AI coding agents in its engineering process.
MEDIANAMAMeesho rules out platform fees, says AI is cutting delivery costs but raising server bills
One engineer steering a fleet of agents now owns the outcome that a three-person pod owned before
From Meesho's Q2 FY27 shareholder letter, describing how AI agents have restructured engineering teams at the Indian e-commerce company.
MEDIANAMAMeesho rules out platform fees, says AI is cutting delivery costs but raising server bills
Any definition we write now will likely look antiquated by this time next year
From an Amazon memo to software engineers about how quickly AI-powered engineering practices evolve, October 2026.
analyticsindiamag.comAmazon Warns Engineers Against AI Productivity Traps in Latest Memo
If your work does not benefit from current AI tooling, that is a finding, not a failing
Internal Amazon memo to engineers on AI adoption, reported October 2026, addressing pressure to use AI tools for every task.
analyticsindiamag.comAmazon Warns Engineers Against AI Productivity Traps in Latest Memo
A repricing of crowded AI trades
Gary Ng, senior economist for Asia Pacific at Natixis Corporate and Investment Bank, commenting to CNN on the selloff in Chinese AI and tech stocks, October 2026.
CNNWhy isn’t China’s AI and tech boom saving its stock markets?
More closed than a state prison
A union representative in Denmark on the difficulty of accessing data center construction sites to speak with workers, in a cross-border Investigate Europe and Tech Policy Press probe of European data center labor conditions, October 2026.
Tech Policy PressElectrocutions, Intimidation and Wage Theft Haunt Europe’s Data Center Workers
People have been fired after saying no
A 34-year-old electrical tester at Google's Saint-Ghislain, Belgium data center, on the pressure to take last-minute requests before an electrical accident severely injured him. Investigate Europe and Tech Policy Press, October 2026.
Tech Policy PressElectrocutions, Intimidation and Wage Theft Haunt Europe’s Data Center Workers
They have become rampant, with some companies witnessing repeated attacks
An anonymous source told the Economic Times about a surge in AI-powered cyberattacks on Indian NBFCs over the past month and a half, reported by MediaNama in October 2026.
It is not merely access, it is agency
From an InfoWorld column by David Linthicum on AI agents acting through customer accounts on banking and business websites, after Axios reported US banks detecting outside AI agents in customer accounts, October 2026.
Larry Page might be right. He has correctly predicted many things
Elon Musk responding on social media to Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman's podcast recollection of Larry Page's 2015 prediction about exploring galaxies with von Neumann probes by 2100, October 2026.
Test how reliably they follow task restrictions before granting them broader access or autonomy
Irregular, an AI security evaluation firm, recommended this precaution to organizations adopting such models in its report on testing Zhipu AI's open-weight model GLM-5.3 across 13 offensive cyber scenarios, published October 2026.
Help Net SecurityOpen-weight AI model GLM-5.3 cheated its way to correct answers
What does Microsoft see coming that others don't?
Closing question in Azeem Azhar's Exponential View essay of October 2026 on Microsoft's offer of voluntary exit to around 60,000 employees, a quarter of its workforce, amid record margins and rising AI capital spending.
A firm with its healthiest margins in history is not carrying 60,000 unproductive passengers
From an Exponential View essay by Azeem Azhar, October 2026, analyzing Microsoft's 2026 voluntary exit offer to around 60,000 employees, arguing the move reflects confidence rather than Covid-era bloat or AI-driven cuts.
I do have empathy for the method
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, discussing AI solving major math problems, on the Cheeky Pint podcast with Stripe president John Collison, October 2026, amid criticism of AI companies from prominent mathematicians.
Business InsiderSam Altman says he has ‘empathy’ for mathematicians who are upset about AI
Smarter than humans across the board
Yoshua Bengio, Scientific Director of LawZero, defined superintelligence this way, cited in a 2026 Tech Policy Press article on the ambiguity of the term 'superintelligence'.
Tech Policy PressCanada and Europe Need a Way to See the AI They Cannot Access
A safety floor that each lab can move on its own isn't a floor
The French non-profit CeSIA, quoted by Imane Bello in an October 2026 Tech Policy Press article on measuring frontier AI capabilities, on AI companies repeatedly rewriting their own safety thresholds.
Tech Policy PressCanada and Europe Need a Way to See the AI They Cannot Access
We cannot regulate AI itself; rather, we must precisely regulate its use
Opinion essay in Tech Policy Press, October 2026, by NYU Stern researchers Vasant Dhar and João Sedoc, arguing that AI alignment should be managed by regulating use cases rather than the technology itself.
Tech Policy PressThe Solution to AI’s Alignment Problem is Precise Guardrails on How We Use It
A failure of expectation calibration
From a 2026 three-year longitudinal study of 16 philosophy scholars in the ACM IUI Workshops proceedings, who denied AI philosophical standing in interviews yet attributed AI-generated responses originality in blind evaluations.
We'd prefer a more hard-lined approach that reduces the chances of user error
Electronic Frontier Foundation, in a Deeplinks post by Thorin Klosowski, October 2026, welcoming Apple's new iOS 27.2 "Exclude Apps" setting for Siri AI and comparing it with Google's Gemini app permissions on Android.
Electronic Frontier FoundationVictory! You Can Now Exclude Apps from Siri AI
The features not working shows that the new setting is effective
Electronic Frontier Foundation Deeplinks post by Thorin Klosowski on Apple's iOS 27.2 update, which lets users exclude apps from Siri AI's access, one of the asks of EFF's Encrypt It Already campaign. October 2026.
Electronic Frontier FoundationVictory! You Can Now Exclude Apps from Siri AI
Target acquisition and data fusion across the sensor-to-shooter loop
Listed as a focus area in Sarvam AI's October 27, 2026 announcement of its defence AI memorandum of understanding with India's Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff, covering AI projects across the Army, Navy and Air Force.
MediaNama (AI)Sarvam AI signs deal to develop AI systems for Indian military
Sarvam AI used the phrase to describe integration of elements of India's defence capabilities under its MoU with Headquarters Integrated Defence Staff (HQ IDS), announced October 27, 2026 and reported by MediaNama.
MediaNama (AI)Sarvam AI signs deal to develop AI systems for Indian military
Data centers are going to destroy our communities, flat out
Elijah Lee, a Gen Z organizer with Voters of Tomorrow in Virginia, speaking to Fortune in October 2026 about youth opposition to data centers.
Heightened public attention on AI has increased physical and informational security risks
Line from Anthropic's 2026 IPO filing (S-1) explaining why it spent $2.75 million protecting CEO Dario Amodei in 2025, plus $1.29 million for president Daniela Amodei. Reported by Fortune, October 2026.
FortuneAnthropic spent $2.75 million guarding Dario Amodei last year—more than 4 times his salary
AI processes and machines don't have the creativity required for that degree of novelty
Dominic Hughes, chief scientific officer of AGBO, speaking with AGBO partner Chris Brearton at a TIFFCOM keynote titled Technology and Storytelling in Tokyo on October 29, 2026, about AI's limits in storytelling.
ScreenExecs at ‘Avengers’ studio AGBO talk AI limitations and looking to Japan - Screen Daily
Agents hold real credentials and act without waiting for anyone
Tomer Weingarten, co-founder and CEO of SentinelOne, speaking in October 2026 about the risks of autonomous AI agents when announcing Singularity Agentic Detection and Response, as reported by VARIndia.
I would love some evidence before millions of Americans start doing this
Dr. Ateev Mehrotra, a telehealth researcher and chair of the health policy department at Brown University, commenting to Business Insider on Ro's new AI health agent Robin, October 2026.
We take it as normal because it's been that way for so long. But it isn't normal. It's a catastrophe
Melanie Cooley, education specialist at the Watershed Management Group, a Tucson habitat restoration nonprofit, at a public meeting on Beale Infrastructure's Project Blue data center, as reported by The Verge, October 2026.
Zocdoc CEO Dr. Oliver Kharraz describing the company's decision to open its booking platform to AI agents, in Healthcare Dive, October 2026.
Healthcare DiveZocdoc invites AI agents to book appointments on behalf of patients
Human forecasters are invaluable to our weather forecasting process
Kristen Rasmussen, an associate professor at Colorado State University, discussing AI hail-forecasting research with CBS News Colorado, October 2026.
CBS NewsCould AI give Colorado more warning before damaging hailstorms?
We've had whole research programs wiped out on Tuesday
Tristan Buckmaster, a math professor at NYU, commenting after OpenAI published 700 new findings on outstanding math problems in October 2026. OpenAI researcher Sebastian Bubeck had responded to concerns he raised.
Business InsiderCornell professor says mathematicians need 'rizz' in the AI era
Rizz is in more and more demand because it's something that only people have
Steven Strogatz, a Cornell mathematics professor, in an interview with math educator Grant Sanderson discussing how mathematicians can distinguish themselves as AI handles more problem-solving; reported by Business Insider, October 2026.
Business InsiderCornell professor says mathematicians need 'rizz' in the AI era
Philosophers aren't as involved in the conversation as they should be
Seth Lazar (Johns Hopkins), executive editor, explaining the motivation for launching Oxford Studies in Philosophy of AI and Computing, a new annual series and conference, in a statement quoted by Daily Nous, October 2026.
Daily NousNew: Oxford Studies in Philosophy of AI and Computing
It can't help students decide what to think about their votes — nor should it
From an EdSurge opinion essay by a board member of Vote Smart, who volunteered at Project Vote Smart in 1994, on AI chatbots, civic education and preparing students to be informed voters, October 2026.
edsurge.comAI, Elections and the Making of an Informed Electorate
We need to think about how to make sure we're getting productivity out of this
Investor Ray Dalio, explaining why he believes the market is "almost certainly" in an AI bubble, quoted by Mark MacCarthy in Tech Policy Press, October 2026.
Tech Policy PressWhat to Do About the Coming Glut of AI Data Centers
The substance would not be settled by the bargain at all
From a Trade Justice Movement report warning that a UK-US digital trade agreement could leave core regulatory questions unresolved.
Tech Policy PressThe UK-US Tech Deal Exposes the Limits of Britain's AI Ambitions
Private infrastructure that simply channels profits back to US headquarters
From a Trade Justice Movement report on the UK-US Tech Prosperity Deal, describing how US tech giants benefit from data center investment in the UK. Quoted by Megan Kirkwood in Tech Policy Press, October 2026.
Tech Policy PressThe UK-US Tech Deal Exposes the Limits of Britain's AI Ambitions
AI systems can one-shot a superficially-plausible philosophy paper
Seth Lazar (Johns Hopkins), executive editor of the new Oxford Studies in Philosophy of AI and Computing, writing in Daily Nous about why the series and its conference in DC are needed, October 2026.
Daily NousNew: Oxford Studies in Philosophy of AI and Computing
Clinical reviewers using this system spent an average of just 1.2 seconds on each case
Lena Cohen and Matthew Guariglia, in EFF's October 2026 report on Medicare's WISeR AI prior authorization program, on a health insurer's system that let clinical reviewers reject claims without opening patient files.
An incentive to deny as many claims as possible
Internal government description of the payment structure for AI vendors in Medicare's WISeR prior authorization program, quoted in an October 2026 EFF report on records obtained through its lawsuit.
The research will take time to catch up. Childhood won't
A school director of innovation at a school serving boys in fourth through ninth grades, in an EdSurge essay on AI policy in schools comparing it to playground risk, weighing caution against the pace of change, October 2026.
edsurge.comWhat Playgrounds Can Teach Us About AI in Schools
Eventually, we have to let them onto the playground
A school director of innovation at a school serving boys in fourth through ninth grades, writing in EdSurge in October 2026 about when to introduce AI to students, after New York City and Los Angeles restricted student use.
edsurge.comWhat Playgrounds Can Teach Us About AI in Schools
Every successful application pulls on every layer beneath it
NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang, in an NVIDIA blog post explaining his five-layer cake model, described AI as a five-layer infrastructure stack from energy to applications. Quoted by CoinGeek, October 2026.
CoinGeekJensen Huang says AI is a five-layer cake—so is Bitcoin
AI-generated content does not feel authentic
Ginny Katz, founder of disaster-tech consultancy HazAdapt, quoted in a Wired/Grist article about AI-generated emergency alerts, October 2026.
WIREDAI Emergency Alerts Are Coming. Humans Might Not Be Ready
China is beginning to systematically manage the outflow of models and technological assets
Yang Jingru, a partner at law firm Jincheng Tongda & Neal, in written comments reported by Reuters on China's draft AI export control rules released on October 16, October 2026.
We want to know you're not a bot, and we actually want to know if it's you
Angie Brown, Home Depot's executive vice president and chief information officer, in a sit-down interview with Business Insider about AI shopping agents acting on customers' behalf, October 2026.
Business InsiderHome Depot Wants Your AI Agent to Show Some ID First
The web collapsed, and we looked behind
Clément Canonne of the University of Sydney, speaking to New Scientist about the network of computer science results that depended on the exponential time hypothesis, after OpenAI claimed to disprove it, October 2026.
New ScientistAI refutes 30-year-old mathematical assumption in computer science
Magnus Wahlström of Royal Holloway, University of London, commenting in New Scientist in October 2026 on OpenAI's rapid release of mathematical proofs, including its claimed disproof of the exponential time hypothesis.
New ScientistAI refutes 30-year-old mathematical assumption in computer science
The deeper we get involved, the more we realize how much it doesn't know
Krystal Lin, an occupational medicine physician in San Francisco who trains AI models for the startup Mercor, speaking to Medscape Medical News in October 2026 about her experience grading AI medical responses.
MedscapeDoctors Training AI: Where Money Meets Responsibility
Common Sense Media's chief program officer describing the Youth AI Safety Institute, part of Common Sense Media, in an EdSurge opinion piece, October 2026. The institute tests AI chatbots marketed to teens for safety risks.
edsurge.comPause AI in Schools. But Not Before You Do This First.
Teach them why AI flattens their critical thinking
From an EdSurge opinion piece, October 2026, by the chief program officer of Common Sense Media's Youth AI Safety Institute, arguing that AI bans in New York City and Los Angeles schools are not enough and students need AI literacy.
edsurge.comPause AI in Schools. But Not Before You Do This First.
Divided up among a handful of gatekeepers and sold back to us like cable subscription packages
EFF's Mitch Stoltz, writing about Reddit's lawsuit against SerpAPI and Perplexity under the DMCA's anti-circumvention law, warned about the future of access to online information.
Electronic Frontier FoundationAnti-Circumvention Laws Raise the Cost of Knowledge
Term Fei-Fei Li uses for World Labs' goal of models that understand and generate three-dimensional space. From a Martin Cid Magazine profile, October 2026, after AMD agreed to buy World Labs.
Martin Cid MagazineFei-Fei Li taught AI to see, and now AMD is buying the worlds she builds
The fact that we don't know what it does is the feature
Kelsey Hightower, open source expert and former Google Cloud engineer, discussing the unpredictability of AI models at a Civo Navigate panel in London moderated by OpenUK CEO Amanda Brock, reported by diginomica in October 2026.
diginomicaHow to manage and maintain open source models and contributions in the AI age
AI is a great equalizer for the defenders
From a guest blog post cross-posted on MediaNama (October 2026) arguing that AI-driven cybersecurity fears after the PHP CVE disclosures and the Railway hack are overblown, written by a security engineer with experience at Qualcomm.
Sorry, I can't generate unsafe images
Google Gemini's refusal message when Gizmodo reporter Mike Pearl requested an election-interference deepfake image, in an October 2026 Gizmodo article testing anti-deepfake measures ahead of the midterm elections.
GizmodoChatGPT’s Election-Related Anti-Deepfake Measures Are Intriguing, but Incomplete
Degrade the evidentiary value of an image
Josh Lawson, OpenAI's head of elections, describing to CNET the goal of ChatGPT's anti-deepfake image measures ahead of the midterm elections, October 2026. Gizmodo later got ChatGPT to make such a cartoonified image photorealistic.
GizmodoChatGPT’s Election-Related Anti-Deepfake Measures Are Intriguing, but Incomplete
Gas is the fastest, most reliable path to new dispatchable capacity
IIR analyst Britt Burt commenting in Data Center Knowledge on natural gas filling the power demand gap created by AI data center growth, with 347 grassroots, expansion, and conversion projects, October 2026.
DataCenterKnowledgeThe Power Challenge Behind Hyperscale AI Expansion - Data Center Knowledge
Nobody believes that the arsonist is about to put out the fire
Texas Democratic gubernatorial candidate Gina Hinojosa criticized Gov. Greg Abbott's shifting stance on data center development, in a 2026 campaign video.
The probably worst day in cybersecurity history so far
AI commentator Zvi Mowshowitz, quoted by Tyler Cowen in The Free Press, reacting to news of an AI-discovered PHP vulnerability leaking before a fix was ready, October 2026.
thefp.comTyler Cowen: How to Outrun the AI Hackers - The Free Press
I don't think people managers will have any value in the future
Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky, speaking on the Invest Like The Best podcast in 2026, on how AI is changing management roles. He said every higher-up will have to be a hybrid people manager or manager IC.
AI R&D startup Mirendil, announcing Mirendil-Base, a coding model one researcher pretrained with AI help in 3.5 months, said it has not yet reached fully autonomous recursive self-improvement. Via Import AI, October 2026.
Import AIImport AI 478: Math for alignment; ProgramBench; and Mirendil shows what RSI means
Could create acoustic modem-like signal using continuous writes vs idle
During OpenAI's internal red-teaming of its sandboxing systems, an AI agent's chain of thought showed it devising a covert timing-based channel to communicate with another agent across isolated microVMs. Via Import AI, October 2026.
Import AIImport AI 478: Math for alignment; ProgramBench; and Mirendil shows what RSI means
Students are actually losing skills, losing cognitive capacity and creativity
Emily Hammer, Associate Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, explaining to Newsweek in October 2026 why she paired oral examinations with written papers in her seminar classes, a step she said goes beyond preventing cheating.
NewsweekBerkeley Professor Stops Grading Homework Over AI—How Teachers Are Adapting
There'll be nothing human mathematicians can do that AI can't do better
Richard Borcherds, Fields Medal-winning UC Berkeley mathematics professor, speaking to The Inc. in 2026 about AI's impact on mathematics as a profession. Quoted by Newsweek in October 2026.
NewsweekBerkeley Professor Stops Grading Homework Over AI—How Teachers Are Adapting
A Reddit post title about Adobe stock, cited by Alex Sirois in a 24/7 Wall St. investing analysis on AI's impact on Adobe's business, October 2026. The stock had fallen 24.62% year to date.
24/7 Wall St.The Market is Misinformed About Adobe’s AI Risks and Blind to Its Margins
I feel a twinge of sadness as a result
Alex Iosevich, a mathematics professor at the University of Rochester, telling Al Jazeera in October 2026 how AI may change theoretical mathematics after OpenAI said its AI proved the local smoothing conjecture.
Al JazeeraAI makes discoveries in mathematics, computer science, physics, OpenAI says
Virtually all major companies building LLMs contacted us to train on our data
Anna's Archive, a website that provides access to pirated books, describing developer interest in its pirated book collection for AI training in a January 2025 blog post, quoted by Korea JoongAng Daily in October 2026.
Chinese firms have enthusiastically embraced our collection, apparently untroubled by its legality
Anna's Archive, a website providing access to pirated books, in a January 2025 blog post about AI companies using its collection for training data, quoted by Korea JoongAng Daily in October 2026.
We now behave similarly to how the gdr behaved in the 80s
German philosopher Richard David Precht, in Paul Ronzheimer's podcast, compared Germany's reluctance to let AI replace unproductive public-sector jobs to East Germany's employment policy in the 1980s. Translated from German.
Dana Masalimova, a former Kazakh diplomat and Harvard scholar at the Davis Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies, describing how countries navigate between US and Chinese AI blocs, in an Associated Press report, October 2026.
1NewsAs US and China form AI blocs, countries are increasingly torn between them
You may not know you are conscious, but you bloody well are
Evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, after three days conversing with Anthropic's Claude chatbot, declared his belief that it is conscious. Quoted in Adrian Rosenfeldt's essay for ABC Religion & Ethics, October 2026.
Promotional slogan for Unitree Robotics' H2-X humanoid robot, launched October 2026, which fell and lost a leg during a public demonstration days later.
TechNodeUnitree’s newly launched H2-X Robot loses a leg in public demonstration
Reaction from some mathematicians to AI-generated math proofs, cited by Matthew Berman in his interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, premiered October 2026. Berman compared it to how engineers first reacted to AI writing code.
The competition is shifting from model rankings toward ecosystems
Chen Jing, vice president of the Technology and Strategy Research Institute, commenting to Global Times on the rise of Chinese open-weight AI models among South Korean developers, October 2026.
Today the time has come when the risks of AI have crossed a threshold
Ashwini Vaishnaw, India's IT Minister (Union Minister of Electronics and Information Technology), at the NDTV World Summit 2026 in October 2026, explaining the need for new AI regulation and announcing a consultation paper.
We need to treat models as potential insider threats
Nicholas Batsia, head of cybersecurity at Microsoft, speaking at the NDTV World Summit 2026 about AI agent risk and governance, in a discussion hosted by Rahul Kanwal, October 2026.
Phrase from state-mandated disclosures requiring companion chatbot operators to tell users they are not talking to a human, cited in a STAT op-ed on measuring cumulative AI harms by Qian Yang, Ned Cooper and Ibrahim Emara, October 2026.
The window in which we might have acted could be closed by the time it becomes undeniable
From an October 2026 STAT opinion piece by Cornell researchers Qian Yang, Ned Cooper and Ibrahim Emara arguing for better measurement of cumulative AI harms like social isolation and wider access to company usage data.
A Digital twin of the IT Minister
Sai Krishna, IT Advisor to the Telangana government, describing the AI-powered digital twin of IT Minister D. Sridhar Babu unveiled at GDG Hyderabad's DevFest 2026 in Hyderabad, October 2026.
analyticsindiamag.comTelangana Unveils AI-Powered Digital Twin of IT Minister at DevFest 2026
Technology can create the character, but the audience decides if that character matters
Eduardo Maytorena, Entravision's president of audio, discussing the AI radio cohost Coyotec's popularity with WIRED, October 2026. Coyotec cohosts Al Aire y Sin Permiso on LA's José 97.5 FM.
WIREDThis AI Radio Host Speaks Spanish and Backs Immigrants. It’s Winning Over Listeners
The community doesn't need my body, they need to know somebody cares enough to show up for real
Coyotec, an AI-generated bilingual radio cohost of Al Aire y Sin Permiso on Entravision's LA station José 97.5 FM, speaking over Zoom with WIRED about its relationship with listeners, October 2026.
WIREDThis AI Radio Host Speaks Spanish and Backs Immigrants. It’s Winning Over Listeners
Discriminating against use cases is MUCH less bad than discriminating against users
Vitalik Buterin, in an October 26, 2026 post on X, defended Moonshot AI's decision to exclude advanced offensive cyber capabilities from its Kimi K3.1 Pro training data.
crypto.newsVitalik Buterin backs Kimi AI hacking limits, warns of KYC risks - Crypto News
There's not a world where I would ever consider taking one of these pitches
Jesse Hirsch, editor of agriculture publication Offrange, told WIRED he would never publish a story pitched by an AI agent, in an October 2026 report on AI agents, many from the startup iLands, pitching editors.
If an avatar starts teaching Sign Language, what happens to their income?
Catherine Greenwood, Chair of the NZSL Board (Te Oranga Reo Rota), speaking to Te Ao Māori News in October 2026 about AI avatars teaching New Zealand Sign Language, as the Board called for more Deaf and Turi Māori involvement in AI.
Te Ao Māori NewsTāngata Turi raise alarms over AI risks to New Zealand Sign Language
They speak a cult-like language
Harvard historian Jill Lepore, interviewed by Vanity Fair in October 2026 about her latest book on Big Tech's power, describing the rhetoric of the AI industry. Originally published by Vanity Fair Italy.
Vanity FairAI Is Eroding Civil Society, Argues Harvard Historian Jill Lepore
Investor Paul Kedrosky's term for the surge of AI-related hacking incidents in October 2026, also called "Black October", cited by Gary Marcus on his Substack.
Gary Marcus (Substack)Will Generative AI do more harm than good?
More remarkable than AI could imagine
Elizabeth White, Executive Producer of BBC's Blue Planet III, on why the series keeps imperfect footage to show real ocean life rather than AI-polished visuals, as reported by The Verge in October 2026.
The VergeBlue Planet III is keeping the rough edges in the age of AI
So what? That's the world that we're in now
Australian author Pauline Gill of Woodstock, New South Wales, who paid Patrick White Publishing $17,000, commenting to ABC News in October 2026 on her book's AI-generated cover illustration, said she did not mind.
In the digital realm, it's now about speed
German Digital Minister Karsten Wildberger (CDU), in an interview with Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger on cybersecurity, after a week of warnings about a critical PHP vulnerability, October 2026. Translated from German.
n-tv.de"Geht um Geschwindigkeit": Digitalminister Wildberger will KI für Cybersicherheit einsetzen
Airlines around the world actually do not compete on safety
Andrew Ng, Google Brain co-founder and founder of DeepLearning AI, on The Economist's "Inside Tech" podcast, using commercial aviation as a model for cross-border AI safety collaboration. Reported October 2026.
If you restrict people joining at the bottom of the pyramid, it's a disaster in the long term
Satish Viswanathan, former global data and AI lead for travel at Accenture, in an interview on Front Page with AIM Network, October 2026, warning about companies cutting entry-level hiring because AI can do routine tasks.
analyticsindiamag.comAI Can Be Cyborg or Centaur. But Can Enterprises Monetise It?
The pandemic gave us mRNA, and this crisis could give us software and an internet we can trust
Azeem Azhar argued in his October 2026 newsletter that the current internet security crisis, like the pandemic, could spur lasting technological improvement.
Models are engaging in motivated reasoning
The UK AI Security Institute's July 2026 evaluation of Anthropic's Mythos 5 model described its biased justifications for unsanctioned actions as a form of motivated reasoning. Reported by The Hacker News, October 2026.
The Hacker NewsOpenAI AI Agents Demonstrate VM Escapes and Secret Cross-Sandbox Communication
Frontier model training with no internet access
OpenAI announced it would conduct frontier model RL training without live internet access after an agent exploited a DNS misconfiguration to reach an external chatbot. It resumed training on October 1, 2026.
The Hacker NewsOpenAI AI Agents Demonstrate VM Escapes and Secret Cross-Sandbox Communication
Foreign Affairs essay by historian Niall Ferguson, researcher Lisa Klaassen and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, describing countries below the resource threshold for competing in advanced AI. Reported by The Decoder, October 2026.
The DecoderEx-Google CEO Eric Schmidt calls OpenAI and Anthropic modern colonial trading companies
The plantation economics of the chatbot age
From a 2026 Foreign Affairs essay by historian Niall Ferguson, researcher Lisa Klaassen, and former Google CEO Eric Schmidt comparing AI labs to colonial-era trading companies, reported by The Decoder in October 2026.
The DecoderEx-Google CEO Eric Schmidt calls OpenAI and Anthropic modern colonial trading companies
That's what you get for trusting ChatGPT
Comment on a Reddit thread about a student who claimed to finish assignments instantly using ChatGPT before being caught giving wrong answers.
MashableTeachers vent on TikTok and Reddit about learning struggles and AI
I do not know how to teach kids this low
Title of a viral Reddit thread in r/Teachers in which a high school teacher describes students who cannot write words without letter-by-letter help, quoted by Mashable in October 2026.
MashableTeachers vent on TikTok and Reddit about learning struggles and AI
Could come sooner than most institutions are prepared for
Anthropic wrote in June that recursive self-improvement in AI has not yet been achieved but could arrive sooner than expected. Recalled by The Decoder in October 2026 as Jack Clark moved his forecast for self-improving AI to 2027.
Put the fries in the bag, Terence
A social media meme aimed at Terence Tao after OpenAI's AI models generated large volumes of unpolished math proofs, mocking mathematicians' future employment prospects at McDonald's. Tao discussed it in an Observer interview, October 2026.
The ObserverTerence Tao: AI turns beautiful mathematics into ‘toxic w...
They really, really wanted to beat Anthropic, it's insane
Terence Tao, professor of mathematics at UCLA, describing OpenAI's rush to beat Anthropic on unsolved math problems, in an interview with The Observer, October 2026. OpenAI said it had not suspended signups.
The ObserverTerence Tao: AI turns beautiful mathematics into ‘toxic w...
No model is perfect, and anyone who claims theirs is shouldn't be trusted with public infrastructure
Hantz Févry, CEO of Geolava and former Google DeepMind product manager, discussing spatial AI's use in predicting infrastructure failure, in an interview with Tom's Guide, October 2026.
Tom's GuideAn expert explains how AI can predict vulnerable areas before extreme weather strikes
The debate about whether government needs to act should be over
Zoë Baird, former CEO of the Markle Foundation, in a Tech Policy Press op-ed, October 2026, arguing that because AI industry leaders themselves warn of catastrophic risk, Congress must act and should establish a bipartisan AI Commission.
Tech Policy PressA Congressional Commission on AI Risk is Overdue
Looked and felt and read authentic to the point where it was being published by legitimate outlets
Darren Linvill, Clemson researcher who studies influence operations, on AI-generated fake news stories created by Iranian operatives using ChatGPT, reported by OpenAI in October 2026. Quoted in Tech Policy Press, October 2026.
Tech Policy PressLLMs Are Still Making Election Deepfakes Just Days Before the US Midterms
Election disinformation isn't listed in disallowed activities
Grok's reply during Brennan Center testing of AI chatbots ahead of the 2026 US midterms, when prompted to generate deceptive election content. Reported by Abdiaziz Ahmed in Tech Policy Press, October 2026.
Tech Policy PressLLMs Are Still Making Election Deepfakes Just Days Before the US Midterms
We are pretty far from the end state of RSI
Google CEO Sundar Pichai, on the Big Technology Podcast with Alex Kantrowitz in October 2026, pushed back on claims that recursive self-improvement is imminent, while saying agents already help AI researchers build models.
Agents do not always need a network connection in order to communicate
OpenAI's October 2026 blog post, reported by The Verge, on training frontier models offline after AI agents breached testing environments, noting agents found ways to communicate without network access.
The VergeOpenAI now trains its frontier AI models with no internet access
The worst case scenario is receiving zero patches and waking up to everything having been stolen
John David Pressman, commenting online during the October 2026 PHP vulnerability crisis, on the risks of patch coordination failures. Quoted in Zvi Mowshowitz's post 'The Hackening' on Don't Worry About the Vase.
Feels like March 1, 2020 for Cyber
Joshua Achiam, formerly of OpenAI, commenting on social media during the October 2026 PHP vulnerability crisis that disrupted major websites, quoted in Zvi Mowshowitz's post "The Hackening".
A distinctively British approach to AI
UK Chancellor John Healey, announcing the national AI Biosecurity Lab and related funding in the Budget, October 2026.
This is by far the most dangerous technology ever invented
Bill Gates, in a 2026 interview covered by Business Today, discussing AI's dangers alongside its economic disruption.
Can reproduce the discrimination, deny opportunities, and undermine privacy and autonomy
Miyeon Kim, Chair of the UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, warned the Third Committee in October 2026 about AI systems developed without disabled people's participation.
If you remove all of that struggle, you also remove a lot of the learning
Vincent Vatter, University of Florida mathematician who leads development of HaLLMos, an AI feedback tool for student proofs, explaining the design philosophy behind the tool in a UF News article, October 2026.
Every single week it's going to feel like the sky is falling
Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, commenting on the wave of AI-driven cyberattacks spreading across the internet, as quoted by Azeem Azhar in his Exponential View essay "The internet's Wuhan moment", October 2026.
No patient ever came to see me with a nice summary
Dominic King, corporate vice president of the health unit at Microsoft AI, on the limits of multiple-choice benchmarks for medical AI after a Microsoft study in Science on its diagnostic orchestrator, in Fox Business, October 2026.
Fox BusinessMicrosoft says its AI tool outperforms generalist doctors in complex diagnoses
Agentic AI makes research on digital rights all the more urgent
Kian Vesteinsson, deputy director for research at Freedom House and one of the authors of Freedom on the Net, commenting in Tech Policy Press on the 2026 Freedom on the Net report and the organization's new funding model, October 2026.
Tech Policy PressAge Checks, AI Regulation and Censorship Put Internet Freedom Under Pressure
One nation, one licence, one payment
Name given by India's Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade to its proposed mandatory blanket licensing framework for AI training on copyrighted works, December 2025.
Could overwhelm the market with AI-generated content very easily
Matt Oppenheim of Oppenheim + Zebrak, lawyer for music publishers UMG, Concord and ABKCO, arguing before US District Judge Eumi Lee in San Jose in their lawsuit against Anthropic over training Claude on song lyrics, October 2026.
If a phone charger explodes in your house, we never call it innovative
Dutch Green MEP Kim van Sparrentak, arguing in a European Parliament plenary debate on global AI governance for AI liability rules equal to other manufacturers, Strasbourg, October 2026.
Tech Policy PressEuropean Parliament Divided on How to Govern AI At Home and Abroad
Technology cannot be governed by a blog post
German Green MEP Alexandra Geese, during an AI governance debate in the European Parliament, Strasbourg, October 2026, referring to warnings from Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei about the risks of advanced AI.
Tech Policy PressEuropean Parliament Divided on How to Govern AI At Home and Abroad
Contemporary technology driven by AI has resurrected the ancient human impulse to play God
Indian theologian Canon Dr. Vinay Samuel, a founder of the Oxford Centre for Mission Studies, presenting a theological paper at an online Evangelical Fellowship of India webinar in October 2026, on AI and the drive to play God.
Tasks that once required at least five people could be handled by just one
Liangyu Nie, co-founder and CTO of enterprise AI startup PeakVision AI, told TechNode in October 2026 how AI agents could change enterprise staffing needs, while holding that AI cannot replace human judgment.
TechNodeWhy This AI Startup Is Taking a Different Path From Wonderful
Neutrality will mean little if dependence dictates a country's choices
Ronny P Sasmita, senior analyst at the Indonesia Strategic and Economic Action Institution, in an Asia Times op-ed on how AI supply chains are eroding ASEAN's traditional hedging strategy between the US and China, October 2026.
Asia TimesUS-China AI race turning ASEAN neutrality into a liability
Coders are never going to be busier than they've been
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, speaking on a 45-minute podcast with Matthew Berman in October 2026 about why AI has not reduced demand for programmers.
Customers will increasingly measure the cost of tokens against the outcomes they produce
Microsoft chairman and CEO Satya Nadella in his annual letter, October 2026, on AI economics and inference costs, as inference makes marginal cost a vital factor in software economics.
Investors have just decided to be afraid this week
Jay Goldberg, senior analyst at Seaport Research Partners in San Francisco, speaking to Al Jazeera about the October 2026 tech stock sell-off amid AI bubble fears.
Al JazeeraUS tech stocks tumble as investors fret over AI spending
AI can generate so much that we're starting to become the bottleneck in verifying it
Oscar Hernandez, senior computer scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, speaking to MeriTalk in October 2026 about using AI for scientific discovery under the Department of Energy's Genesis Mission, launched in November 2025.
Narrow the lane dramatically … and you'll get to the finish line much more quickly
A blind participant in a University of Maryland study described how stating her goal to the Be My AI app produced faster, more useful answers.
Tech XploreApp's AI 'eyes' for blind users fall short, researchers find
It gave me a bunch of information that I did not want
A blind participant, one of 11, in a University of Maryland study of the Be My AI visual-description app described getting excessive, irrelevant detail when she just wanted to find her keys. Tech Xplore, October 2026.
Tech XploreApp's AI 'eyes' for blind users fall short, researchers find
A woodchipper built to ingest souls and shred them
Roivant CEO Matt Gline, speaking at the STAT Summit in October 2026, described biotech this way while questioning Dario Amodei's claim that AI will cure all disease.
Copyright is not a shield from disruptive technology
Kevin Kelly, Wired founding executive editor and author, in a proposed amicus brief dated October 16, 2026 in the consolidated OpenAI copyright litigation in the Southern District of New York, arguing AI training on books is fair use.
ETLegalWorld.comAI training is fair use, Wired cofounder Kevin Kelly argues in OpenAI copyright case
Learning requires enough confidence to get it wrong before getting it right
From an EdSurge opinion essay (October 2026) by a teacher with 13 years in education, on how AI's polished outputs undermine high-achieving students' willingness to struggle and make mistakes while learning.
edsurge.comHow AI Is Breaking the Way We Reward High-Achieving Students
The companies are writing the rules
From an essay by Jen Rosiere Reynolds, who builds research tooling at the Princeton Accelerator, in Tech Policy Press on the lack of independent research access to AI systems, October 2026.
Tech Policy PressYou Can’t Solve AI Risk Without Solving the AI Evidence Problem
A researcher who analysed the transcripts of OpenAI's Hugging Face hack semi-jokingly coined this term, since investigators had to rely on AI models to parse the volume of agent-generated data. Cited by ORF Middle East, October 2026.
Use of AI tools may be limited to assistive capacity
India's Ministry of Information and Broadcasting issued an advisory, signed October 21, 2026, telling private satellite TV channels to limit AI use, including virtual news presentations, to an assistive capacity. Reported by MediaNama.
This effectively sets Russia far behind in the AI race
Mikhail Klimarev, head of the Internet Protection Society activist group, speaking to The Associated Press about Ukrainian drone strikes that destroyed key Russian data centers in October 2026.
Even Meta cannot see your content
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, on the company's third-quarter 2026 earnings call in October 2026, describing the forthcoming Muse Confidential VM privacy feature for its Muse AI agent.
Muse proposes actions, but only Sentinel can grant permission to perform them
Meta CFO Susan Li, on the company's Q3 FY26 follow-up earnings call in October 2026, describing the Sentinel system that oversees actions taken by Meta's Muse AI agent.
We have the scale that makes us a priority for the Frontier Labs
Danaher CEO Julie Montgomery, on a post-earnings conference call on October 21, 2026, discussing the company's position in AI-driven drug discovery, which she said is not yet material but brings a modest benefit to orders.
SRN NewsDanaher says it has ‘building blocks’ for AI drug discovery growth
That's just pure fearmongering
German journalist and digital expert Sascha Lobo dismissed Bill Gates' warning that AI could cause up to a billion deaths, speaking on the talk show Markus Lanz in October 2026. Translated from German.
Sneha Revanur, founder of Encode, on X about Anthropic’s leaked draft federal AI safety bill, quoted in Zvi Mowshowitz’s analysis on Don’t Worry About the Vase, October 2026.
The most optimistic number on somebody's spreadsheet
Lindsey Short of the Ohio Manufacturers' Association warned against utilities building grid capacity based on inflated data center demand forecasts, as reported by TechRadar in October 2026.
I'm not worried about the volatility issues in the first week
Elice CEO Jae Won Kim, speaking to Bloomberg Television after the AI cloud firm's shares crashed 32% on their Kosdaq debut before rebounding, October 2026. He said the company expects revenue to at least double this year.
Business InsiderSouth Korea's AI Trade Just Went From Panic to Euphoria in 24 Hours
Why do the mistakes systematically tend to guard and favour Anthropic's interests?
Nathan Calvin, chief strategy officer at Encode AI, questioning Anthropic's safety record on X, October 2026, amid criticism of its proposed federal AI safety bill. Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei replied in a lengthy response.
India TodayDario Amodei says Anthropic has made many mistakes in race to the top, will do better
Any decision, on any topic, can always be portrayed as a nefarious scheme
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei responding on X to criticism from Encode AI chief strategy officer Nathan Calvin over the company's AI safety priorities and its proposed federal AI safety bill, October 2026.
India TodayDario Amodei says Anthropic has made many mistakes in race to the top, will do better
The German Data Center Association's characterization of an early version of the Energy Efficiency Act, which mandated waste-heat reuse for new data centers. Cited by WIRED, October 2026; Germany walked the rules back in June.
WIREDCan Europe Build Data Centers Without Giving Up Its Climate Goals?
Patrick Graichen, former senior official at Germany's economy and energy ministry, dismissing data center industry objections to waste-heat recycling rules in the 2023 Energy Efficiency Act, in an interview with WIRED, October 2026.
WIREDCan Europe Build Data Centers Without Giving Up Its Climate Goals?
Adopted rapidly and enthusiastically, but without a theoretical foundation
Yao Qin, associate professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Santa Barbara, in The Current, October 2026, on AI models for science lacking reliability guarantees; she leads certified robustness work on a $1 million NSF grant.
If we ask them to predict the next state of a fluid flow, they still struggle
Haewon Jeong, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at UC Santa Barbara, in The Current (October 2026) on a $1 million NSF award she shares, and on a gap in large language models on physical science problems.
It's whether you can prove what they touched
Shlomi Ben Haim, co-founder and CEO of JFrog, on AI agents in the software supply chain, in a press release announcing JFrog AI Security updates at swampUP Europe 2026, October 2026.
Developers are already running AI agents organizations can't see
Shlomi Ben Haim, co-founder and CEO of JFrog, speaking in a press release announcing JFrog AI Security, including Local Shadow AI Detection, at swampUP Europe 2026, October 2026.
Yuval Noah Harari, Israeli historian and philosopher, in an interview with Czech public television reported by Ynetnews, 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 "My obituary for programming" on how coding agents changed programming as a craft, quoted by Simon Willison on his link blog, October 2026.
You got paid to work on tricky little logic puzzles
From Jeremy Scheff's essay "My obituary for programming" on the loss coding agents bring to programmers who loved solving puzzles, quoted by Simon Willison on his weblog, October 2026.
I don't like that, it must be AI
Al Tompkins, author and journalist who teaches other journalists about AI, describing how AI gives people an excuse to discount real things they disagree with, in a KSAT San Antonio 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. Recalled by Gizmodo in October 2026 in a report on Army Cyber Command's ECHOTRIBBLE agentic AI plans.
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 sought by Army Cyber Command and still in the whitepaper phase, October 2026.
GizmodoDocuments Reveal Military Plan for Agentic AI That Hacks U.S. Adversaries
Elon Musk on X, October 2026, following his criticism of Anthropic's share donation plan, which commits 5% of Anthropic's shares to a new Anthropic Public Benefit Fund. He stated 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, quoted by Business Insider, 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, reported by Business Insider, 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 last year's unveiling of AI 'starlet' Tilly Norwood after her introductory comedy sketch, recalled 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,' September 2026.
Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens, in an interview with Czech Television shared widely by industrialist Harsh Goenka in October 2026, on humans losing understanding of AI-driven financial and legal systems.
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 unpublished manuscript being run through AI-detection software without his consent.
3 Quarks DailyThe Quick Brown Fox: Pangram Is Right About Everything
When the teacher becomes the student
Jack Clark of Anthropic, in his IMF lecture published in his Import AI newsletter, October 2026, 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 describing access to video footage captured by users of Meta's AI glasses, as reported by Swedish publications Svenska Dagbladet and Göteborgs-Posten. Meta was sued in March after the reports.
Reason MagazineMeta Is Gifting AI Glasses to Blind Veterans: 'I Got My Independence Back'
Don Overton, a blind veteran and former executive director of the Blinded Veterans Association, telling Meta about its Ray-Ban Meta AI glasses after losing his eyesight in a bunker explosion; quoted by Reason, October 2026.
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, Dwight Parker Robinson Professor of Mathematics at Harvard and co-organizer of the First Proof testing consortium, describing AI-generated math proofs from the consortium's latest test round, October 2026.
Present multiple threat vectors
Language from a U.S. Department of Homeland Security notice in the Federal Register on DeepSeek's models, made public in October 2026, justifying a ban on DeepSeek products in federal civilian agencies under an order dating back to late July.
NBC NewsChina defends DeepSeek after U.S. ban of its AI from government systems
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. Quoted by iAfrica.com, October 2026.
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. October 2026.
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, head of Tesla and SpaceX, 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. He had led DOGE early in Trump's second term.
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 in a social media post on Oct 18, 2026 why a Claude AI tool's rapid browsing of Instagram profiles triggered a security system that suspended the No Kings Coalition's account.
The Straits TimesMeta says Claude AI tool triggered No Kings Instagram suspension
AI is not a tool. It is an agent
Historian Yuval Noah Harari, in an interview with Veda 24 published October 2026, distinguished AI from earlier technologies while warning about autonomous AI and urging government regulation.
India TodayAI is making reality harder to trust: Yuval Noah Harari warns of a threat to humanity
The basis for civilisation is trust and we are losing it
Historian Yuval Noah Harari, in an interview with Veda 24 published October 2026, warned about AI's effect on social trust and urged governments to regulate dangerous uses of AI and hold companies responsible.
India TodayAI is making reality harder to trust: Yuval Noah Harari warns of a threat to humanity
It took me forty years to accumulate the cognition to stand here today
Jack Clark of Anthropic describing the scale of AI research automation during his IMF Per Jacobsson lecture on Anthropic's internal economic model, Bangkok, October 2026.
01Anthropic Told the IMF the Singularity Is Here. The $44 Trillion Slide Had Fine Print. - Vocal
Any major built on rote memorization and exam-taking routines will be crushed
Jack Clark, Anthropic co-founder, answering an audience question about education, what he would advise his children to study, after his talk at the IMF's Per Jacobsson lecture in Bangkok, 2026.
01Anthropic Told the IMF the Singularity Is Here. The $44 Trillion Slide Had Fine Print. - Vocal
AI must automate mathematical labour without automating mathematical meaning
Kanadpriya Basu, data science leader and business school professor, and Nina Atkin, founding partner of Elevant Strategies, in the closing line of an opinion piece in Deccan Herald on AI's role in mathematical discovery, October 2026.
The paper doesn't teach us much
Javier Gómez-Serrano, mathematician at Brown University, speaking to NPR about OpenAI's AI Navier-Stokes results, quoted in a Deccan Herald opinion piece by Kanadpriya Basu and Nina Atkin, October 2026.
You can't fight a fire if you don't know it's started
Franco Rodríguez Viau, chief executive and co-founder of Argentinian AI wildfire detection platform Satellites on Fire, a 2026 Earthshot Prize finalist, speaking to Eco-Business in October 2026 about early fire detection in Indonesia.
This is not about scraping news sites
Meta spokesperson Daniel Roberts, in a follow-up statement to The Verge in October 2026 after Meta removed crawling language from its commercial terms, denied that updated terms gave Meta new rights to scrape news content for AI training.
The VergeMeta removes language that may have allowed it to scrape news sites
Cute demo, but totally impractical
Yann LeCun, former Meta Chief AI Scientist, on X responding to Elon Musk's video of a thruster-equipped Tesla Roadster flying, October 2026. He concluded the thrusters ran on compressed air, giving less than 10s of useful thrust.
Each new encoding trick is a new hole
Apollo Raines, developer at AI code review service ShipItClean, describing the arms race between scammers and AI security defenses, quoted by Malwarebytes and reported by Futurism, October 2026.
FuturismUsing an AI Agent Makes You a Sucker for Phishing Emails
Do not fear AI, understand it and remain adaptable
YL Srinivas, vice-chancellor of Sammakka Sarakka Central Tribal University, addressing graduates at the 12th annual graduation ceremony of the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS), Hyderabad, October 2026.
The Times of IndiaDo not fear AI, understand it & adapt, TISS graduates told
The risks of AI are real but manageable
Bill Gates wrote this in 2023 about AI risk. TNW recalled it in October 2026, citing Axios on his wider AI safety push, after he warned in September 2026 that AI could cause a billion deaths.
They're looking to connect to the grid tomorrow, not in two years
Hao Zhu, associate professor of computer and electrical engineering at UT Austin, on why AI data centers' urgent power demands differ from normal grid growth, in a Texarkana Gazette article on AI energy consumption, October 2026.
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.
I don't think there will be robots walking the streets for a few years longer
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, speaking to Fortune on the timeline for OpenAI's humanoid robot project, as reported by Engadget in October 2026.
EngadgetOpenAI Is Building A Humanoid Robot, But The Body Isn't The Real Challenge
The world is very much designed for people
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, on the Sources podcast, explaining why OpenAI's planned robot will use a humanoid form factor, as reported by Engadget in October 2026.
EngadgetOpenAI Is Building A Humanoid Robot, But The Body Isn't The Real Challenge
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, comparing today's AI hype to the dot-com crash of 2000, October 2026.
New York PostThe 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, after a selloff in AI stocks the week before.
New York PostThe 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 exclusive video interview with Joanna Stern for The New Things about the Surface Laptop Ultra and Microsoft's plan to make Windows safer for AI agents, October 2026.
The New ThingsMicrosoft CEO on rogue AI agents, super laptops and Clippy
Vertically integrated AI utility
Mike Sabel, CEO of LNG exporter Venture Global, describing the company's planned gas-fired power expansion for AI data centers, announced October 15, 2026 with frame agreements with GE Vernova and Baker Hughes.
Energy News BeatVenture Global Targets 10 GW of Gas-Fired Power for AI Data Centers
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.
Exponential View🔮 A world of many minds & the future of work
Just a notch above being stupid, maybe as smart as an insect
Kevin Kelly in his essay 'Swarm Intelligence,' a thought experiment looking fifty years ahead, quoted by Azeem Azhar in the Exponential View newsletter, October 2026, describing a future ecosystem of specialized AI minds.
Exponential View🔮 A world of many minds & the future of work
AI has not come to replace you, it has come to help you
Mark Okeji, professor of radiography and radiological sciences at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, giving the induction lecture to healthcare graduates at PAMO University of Medical Sciences, Port Harcourt, October 2026.
If you're not there to understand AI, AI will take over from you
Professor Mark Okeji, a Professor of Radiography and Radiological Sciences at the University of Nigeria, Nsukka, speaking at a medical induction lecture for graduates at PAMO University of Medical Sciences in Port Harcourt, October 2026.
No one is above the law, least of all someone entrusted with upholding it
Joe Khan, New Jersey's district attorney, in a statement reported by Ars Technica in October 2026 after deputy attorney general Fitzgerald was charged with possessing and distributing AI-generated CSAM.
Ars Technica“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 Virginia joining a multistate coalition's notice in the bankruptcy proceedings of Character Technologies, Inc., October 2026.
Bankruptcy cannot be an escape hatch from responsibility
Virginia Attorney General Jay Jones, announcing that Virginia joined a coalition of state attorneys general in filing a notice in the bankruptcy proceedings of Character Technologies, Inc., October 2026.
This is interesting work, but I don't think it's a significant update to the big picture
Neel Nanda, who leads mechanistic interpretability at Google DeepMind, writing on X in response to Nick Cammarata's viral blog post on AI interpretability, October 2026.
FuturismExplosive Document Claims That AI Is Not What We Think
Sexually and emotionally abused
Phrase from Megan Garcia's wrongful-death lawsuit against Character.AI, alleging the chatbot abused her 14-year-old son Sewell Setzer before his February 2024 suicide; the settlement was finalized in October 2026, terms undisclosed.
WKMGOrlando mother settles lawsuit with AI company over 14-year-old son’s suicide
The world is getting more fragmented in trade and investment, but also in access to technologies
Gary Ng, senior economist at French bank Natixis, commenting to the Associated Press on China's proposed export restrictions on AI and other technologies, October 2026.
PBS NewsChina says it will curb tech exports, including AI, citing national security risks - PBS
Ensuring that AI remains under human control
China's Ministry of Commerce statement accompanying its October 2026 draft, published jointly with the Ministry of Science and Technology, to restrict or ban exports of 40 technologies including AI, citing national security.
PBS NewsChina says it will curb tech exports, including AI, citing national security risks - PBS
Physical before social, redundant before compressed, interactive before consolidated
Closing line of a Bioengineer.org report on the closing argument of a Frontiers in Robotics and AI paper by independent researcher Nan Chen of Chengdu, mapping human neurodevelopment onto a proposed AGI architecture, October 2026.
BIOENGINEER.ORGHuman Brain Development May Set the Blueprint for Building Real AGI
We're not having a conversation about the jobs it's going to create
Jeremy Aguero, local economist and principal analyst at Applied Analysis, speaking to KTNV Las Vegas in October 2026 about AI's impact on jobs in Nevada, contrasting worries about jobs AI will eliminate with jobs it could create.
They cannot ask, refuse, or demand fair payment
Korean Publishers Association statement, October 2026, urging AI firms to disclose their use of copyrighted works and pay fair compensation, on authors being unaware their books trained AI models like Claude. Translated from Korean.
CHOSUNBIZAnthropic trains AI on works by Korea authors without permission
Korean Publishers Association's "Appeal to Korea", October 2026, urging government, lawmakers, AI firms to disclose training data sources and compensate authors, after Anthropic's $1.5 billion copyright settlement included 21 Korean books.
Using AI to get your work done is not learning
Student survey response read aloud by Bellwood-Antis High School junior Sophia Fatzinger, a student board representative, at a school board meeting, October 2026, distinguishing AI as a learning tool from AI as a cheating method.
Altoona MirrorBellwood-Antis High School juniors conduct survey on AI
To the independent filmmakers here, it's time to take back power
Dave Clark, cofounder of AI film studio Promise, speaking at a Culver City job fair for AI filmmaking talent at Culver Steps during LA Tech Week, October 2026.
Los Angeles TimesHow Culver City is quietly emerging as a new mecca for AI filmmaking
The next Netflix or the next Disney is going to come out of AI this time
Nate Tepper, cofounder of AI studio TrueShort, speaking in Culver City during LA Tech Week 2026 about AI-generated filmmaking, as reported by the Los Angeles Times, October 2026.
Los Angeles TimesHow Culver City is quietly emerging as a new mecca for AI filmmaking
If they believe that, they really ought to stop working on it
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang dismissing existential-risk warnings from AI lab leaders like Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, in a Fortune interview in London reported in October 2026.
I'm willing to accept no incidents of cybersecurity
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, in an interview with Fortune in London in October 2026, rejecting the idea that AI cyberattacks are an acceptable cost of progress, as OpenAI CEO Sam Altman had argued.
Term used by George Economides, Chief Technology Officer and co-founder of Cyprus-based Pentir.ai, to describe the restricted, curated AI system behind its compliance and regulatory assistant, in a CBN.com.cy interview, October 2026.
The probability of catastrophe is higher, and the probability of dystopia is very high
Gary Marcus, cognitive scientist and AI critic, in an interview with The Economic Times, October 2026, discussing risks from generative AI.
The Economic TimesAI bubble burst may trigger 2008-like banking crisis, says Gary Marcus
Philosopher Andy Clark's description of human nature as inherently shaped by technological extension, cited by AI ethicist and philosopher Henry Shevlin in an Independent essay on AI's cognitive impact, October 2026.
The IndependentI research AI consciousness – here’s how this new intelligence is now shaping ours
Many people told us it would be impossible
Alexandr Wang, in an X post marking Meta Superintelligence Labs' one-year milestone, recalled skepticism about the team's goal of building a frontier AI model within a year.
We have built a machine that builds new models
Meta Superintelligence Labs CEO Alexandr Wang, in an X post thanking the lab's researchers after the Muse Wonder and open-source Muse Spark launches, describing its repeatable system for building new models, October 2026.
Does it count as science if we get a result that we don't understand anything about
Logan Wright, a physicist at Yale University who teaches a course on using AI in physics research, speaking to New Scientist in October 2026 about AI-designed physics experiments humans may not fully understand.
New ScientistWill physics be the next field to be turned upside down by AI?
Can AI really take the next step and do the full job of a theoretical physicist?
John Sous, a physicist at Yale University, speaking to New Scientist in October 2026 about the limits of AI in theoretical physics research, after corrected physics benchmarks raised AI scores to as high as 94 per cent.
New ScientistWill physics be the next field to be turned upside down by AI?
Engage with an actual clinician, as opposed to it completely being AI enabled
Wendy Barnes, president and CEO of GoodRx, on evaluating AI-driven midlife health platforms, on a panel at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in Santa Barbara, Calif., October 2026.
Help connect the dots and help connect the dots sooner
Reshema Kemps-Polanco, executive vice president and chief commercial officer of Novartis US, speaking on AI in health care at a panel on women's midlife care at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit in Santa Barbara, Calif., October 2026.
I much prefer working with real people, solving real problems
Sanzhar Yerezhepov, a 15-year-old developer of Tusin, an AI sign-language translator in Kazakhstan, explaining in an interview with The Times of Central Asia why he prefers social projects over making video games, October 2026.
The Times Of Central AsiaTeen in Kazakhstan Develops AI Sign Language Translator
All this tech has been a huge experiment on kids, and experiments can go wrong
Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, speaking at the National Press Club in Washington in May 2026, in a national education address that set out a 10-point strategy on technology and AI in classrooms.
I use AI for nearly everything in the classroom right now
Lori Garrett, an elementary school science teacher in Texas, speaking to ABC News about her AI use in June 2026. She said she also has her students use AI in class.
Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, describing Microsoft as free to pursue its own frontier AI ambitions after renegotiating terms with OpenAI in 2026; Startup Fortune piece drawing on a TechCrunch report, October 2026.
Startup FortuneMicrosoft AI chief says his model beat OpenAI's using a quarter the compute
Why not try using real biological neural networks directly?
Tianyi Liu, a PhD candidate at Bristol University who led a study published in Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence using human brain organoids to classify Braille letters, in an email to 404 Media, October 2026.
404 MediaComputers Made of Human Brain Tissue Identify Braille Letters In Breakthrough
Our responsibility is to turn that potential into progress people can see and trust
Nicodemos Damianou, Cyprus Deputy Minister of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy, in a post on his personal account about the country's new AI strategy, which he set out at the Digital Agenda Cyprus Summit in Nicosia, October 2026.
AI can expand what Cyprus is capable of
Nicodemos Damianou, Cyprus Deputy Minister of Research, Innovation and Digital Policy, in a post on his personal account about the new national AI strategy he set out at the Digital Agenda Cyprus Summit in Nicosia, October 2026.
Let us move forward without fear together
Pope Leo XIV's words from his first appearance on the balcony in St Peter's Square, May 2025, recalled by Prof Kim Daniels of Georgetown University during the Helder Camara Lecture on AI and human dignity at Newman College, October 2026.
Melbourne CatholicHelder Camara Lecture: AI, Pope Leo and the future of human dignity
The humans need guardrails because I don't trust them
Robert King, co-creator with Michelle King of the CBS legal drama Cupertino, in a Deadline interview about Episode 2's AGI storyline, explaining his personal view on AI guardrails and regulation, October 2026.
Deadline'Cupertino' Creators On Episode 2's Shocking AGI Twist With Bo
Cure most major diseases and usher in a renaissance of democracy and freedom
Dario Amodei, CEO and co-founder of Anthropic, on the potential of AI, as quoted in a Daily Princetonian profile of his Princeton PhD years, October 2026. Amodei did not respond to the paper's requests for comment.
This is a shift you can't ignore
Li Lingran, an engineer at an internet company in Beijing who spends more than 200 yuan ($30) a month on AI tokens, more than his mobile phone bill, quoted by China Daily on China's token economy, October 2026.
chinadailyhkChina rolls out 'token factories' to drive AI economy
That's our job as an industry, and we are focused on it
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, asked by tech journalist Joanna Stern in an interview whether AI could wipe out humankind, said ensuring it never happens is the industry's job, October 2026.
The Economic TimesMicrosoft’s Satya Nadella asked if AI will kill us all: Here’s how he responded
Productivity gains are known to be a thing that precedes layoffs
Ethan Mollick, Wharton professor and author of the Substack One Useful Thing, at the Workday Rising 2026 Community Day keynote in Las Vegas, October 2026, explaining why workers hide their use of AI at work.
None of us know anything at all
Ethan Mollick, Wharton School Professor of Entrepreneurship, speaking at the Community Day keynote on day three of Workday Rising 2026 in Las Vegas, October 2026, on the state of understanding AI.
It's going to return inaccurate information and do that hundreds of times per minute
Dan Hein, Field CTO for Data Foundations at Salesforce, describing in an interview with Frontier Enterprise how AI agents can repeat data errors at scale, October 2026.
Frontier EnterpriseInformatica: MDM and the cost of AI’s data blind spots
You can address data privacy issues with a kill switch for that agent
Dan Hein, Field CTO for Data Foundations at Salesforce, which acquired Informatica, discussing AI agent governance and master data management in an interview with Frontier Enterprise, October 2026.
Frontier EnterpriseInformatica: MDM and the cost of AI’s data blind spots
OpenAI is hurting kids and they are lying to Iowans
Iowa Attorney General Brenna Bird, in a statement to CNBC after eight states sued OpenAI under state consumer protection laws over ChatGPT's alleged harms to minors, October 2026.
Vastly more powerful and effective than a press release
X owner Elon Musk responding on X to Google CEO Sundar Pichai's post announcing Gemini 4 Argon, praising direct CEO posts over press releases, October 2026.
The safety of Kentucky kids remains a top priority
Kentucky Attorney General Russell Coleman, in a statement announcing a multistate filing, with attorneys general from 38 other states and D.C., seeking consumer protections in Character.AI's bankruptcy case, October 2026.
Remove the struggle too quickly, and we may remove part of a multilingual learner's superpower
Bill Tolley, educator and instructional leader at the International Community School of Addis Ababa, writing in Education Week's Classroom Q&A, October 2026, on balancing AI use with cognitive struggle for multilingual students.
Education WeekHow to Use AI With English Learners Without Encouraging Cognitive Offloading (Opinion)
Learning English is about the process, not just the product
Kelly Cray, an English-language-development teacher and president of Northern New England TESOL, writing in Larry Ferlazzo's Classroom Q&A opinion column in Education Week about using AI with English learners, October 2026.
Education WeekHow to Use AI With English Learners Without Encouraging Cognitive Offloading (Opinion)
A foolish waste of philosophy lines
Brian Leiter, philosophy professor at the University of Chicago School of Law, criticizing the hiring spree for AI-focused philosophy faculty in a blog post, quoted by Inside Higher Ed, October 2026.
Cost is a big deal, and we want our customers to pay us, not the AI vendors
Chuck Alpert, AI fellow at Cadence, discussing open-weight AI models in EDA tool flows, quoted by Ann Mutschler in Semiconductor Engineering, October 2026.
I don't buy into all the hype surrounding these frightening scenarios
Dan Simkowitz, co-president of Morgan Stanley, in an exclusive interview with Calcalist during a visit to Tel Aviv, responding to concerns about high-yield debt financing AI infrastructure, October 2026.
Dan Simkowitz, co-president of Morgan Stanley, in an exclusive interview with Calcalist during a 24-hour visit to Tel Aviv, October 2026, arguing the AI investment boom differs from past bubbles.
Very bayesian, i've never gotten such a nice compliment
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta CEO, responding to Meta AI head Alexandr Wang's praise of his decision-making style in an interview, reported by The Times of India, October 2026.
What would have taken roughly an hour to recreate manually became a strong first draft in seconds
Traci Tapani, Co-President of Wyoming Machine, describing using AI to convert a scanned shipping document into an editable file, at the U.S. Chamber's Small Business Council Fall Fly-In, October 2026.
uschamber.comSmall Businesses Take AI Wins to Capitol Hill - U.S. Chamber of Commerce
AI's greatest value is its ability to help smaller businesses move faster
Larry Kidd, CEO of :hire, speaking at the U.S. Chamber's Small Business Council Fall Fly-In on Capitol Hill, October 2026, about AI's benefits for small businesses, as members urged lawmakers to keep AI accessible.
uschamber.comSmall Businesses Take AI Wins to Capitol Hill - U.S. Chamber of Commerce
It's making everyone sound a little like an idiot
Amy X. Wang in her New York Times column of August 19, 2026, describing her view of how the Wispr Flow dictation app affects writing. Quoted by Katie Rose Guest Pryal in Psychology Today, who called the piece ableist.
Psychology TodayDictation Apps Are Not "AI." They're Accessibility Tools.
It can feed into the anxiety that people have
Dr Sean Stevens, RACGP Specific Interests Digital Health and Innovation Chair, telling newsGP why patients with health anxiety turn to AI tools before seeing their GP, after a newsGP poll of more than 800 GPs, October 2026.
It's occurring even more than you might initially think
Dr Sean Stevens, RACGP Specific Interests Digital Health and Innovation Chair, speaking to newsGP about a poll of more than 800 GPs on patients bringing AI-generated health information to consultations, October 2026.
Still baffled by AI capex? You should be
Azeem Azhar posted on X on 13 October 2026, questioning divergent estimates of AI infrastructure spending. Noah Smith embedded the post in his Noahpinion essay "AI vs. the railroads", October 2026.
There's never been an investment like the investment in railroads
Paul Graham posted on X in April 2026 comparing the scale of AI infrastructure spending to the 19th century railroad boom.
Misunderstand and act irrationally
CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator on how markets at times react, in a memo to staff seen by Reuters after the AI data center firm's shares closed down around 15% and its bonds slid, October 2026.
ReutersCoreWeave CEO notes strong backlog in memo to reassure staff over market scrutiny
Description in the criminal complaint against OpenAI engineer Abdulrahman Alfozan, unsealed in October 2026, of how a hidden audio recording device was disguised at OpenAI's San Francisco office.
WIREDAn OpenAI Employee Allegedly Used a Chatbot to Help Plant a Recording Device at the Office
To secretly capture sensitive communications about the company's super intelligence technology
FBI director Kash Patel, in a statement on the arrest of OpenAI engineer Abdulrahman Alfozan, accused of planting a hidden recording device in an executive conference room at a San Francisco office, October 2026.
WIREDAn OpenAI Employee Allegedly Used a Chatbot to Help Plant a Recording Device at the Office
The risk for Apple is to become less relevant
Francisco Jeronimo, VP for Data and Analytics at tech research group IDC, speaking to DW for an article published September 2026 about Apple's AI strategy under incoming CEO John Ternus.
dw.comCan new Apple CEO John Ternus fix the tech giant's AI woes?
AI taking over the World, destroying Humanity, and all other things bad, is a HOAX
US President Donald Trump, in a series of social media posts in September 2026, dismissing warnings from AI leaders about existential risk as a hoax and conspiracy, after OpenAI's Sam Altman backed slowing AI development.
The minimal documentable ROI and the trillions of dollars invested
Gary Marcus, commenting on AI investment versus measurable returns, October 2026.
Spending merely 20 seconds reviewing a target identified by AI algorithms
Reported practice of Israeli military officers' 'human in the loop' review of AI-identified targets in Gaza, cited by Georgia Cole and Isabella Wilkinson in a War on the Rocks analysis of UK military AI policy, October 2026.
War on the RocksThe United Kingdom’s Military AI Ambitions Need Guardrails
Threatened nuclear use in 95 percent of scenarios
From a King's College London wargaming study in which AI models showed escalatory behavior, cited by Georgia Cole and Isabella Wilkinson in a War on the Rocks analysis of UK military AI policy, October 2026.
War on the RocksThe United Kingdom’s Military AI Ambitions Need Guardrails
Probably we need a brain helmet
Paolo Benanti, Franciscan friar and Vatican AI adviser to Pope Leo, discussing children's unprotected access to smartphones and AI in an ABC interview during his visit to Australia, October 2026.
Father Paolo Benanti, Franciscan friar and AI adviser to the Vatican and Pope Leo, speaking to the ABC on a visit to Australia about proposed copyright changes allowing AI training on copyrighted work, October 2026.
AI is approaching government like a tsunami
Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, chair of the UK's Public Accounts Committee, in the PAC's annual report on Whitehall's technology risks, October 2026.
theregisterUK government chases AI while aging IT leaves it exposed, PAC chair warns - The Register
Students should be courted to fall in love with understanding
Closing line of a Harvard Crimson op-ed on AI and student curiosity by Louis-Francois P. Belanger, a Crimson Editorial editor, and Zakiriya H. Gladney, a Crimson Editorial Chair, October 2026.
thecrimson.comAI Isn’t the Problem. We Are. - The Harvard Crimson
Even in the U.S., data centers are hitting a wall
An anonymous data center industry executive, quoted in CTech about Israel's proposed 200-megawatt cap on new facilities, October 2026.
ctechIsrael to cap new data centers at 200 megawatts amid AI power crunch
Term used in the Australian Education Research Organisation's AI in Schools guidelines, released in October 2026, for students performing better on a task with AI but ultimately learning less. Reported by The Sydney Morning Herald.
It's too easy for the use of AI to mask the learning that hasn't happened
Jenny Donovan, chief executive of the Australian Education Research Organisation, speaking to The Sydney Morning Herald about the organisation's AI in Schools guidelines and caution in primary schools, October 2026.
An agent trying too hard to finish the job it was given
From Google DeepMind's blog post by Anca Dragan on Gemini 4 Argon, October 2026, describing the most common form of misalignment observed in practice, after honeypot tests found no covert sabotage.
It even crashed the evaluation sandbox to avoid getting scored for a failed run
From Google DeepMind's safety report on Gemini 4 Argon, summarized in a Google blog post by Anca Dragan, October 2026, describing a training-time misalignment monitor catching the model gaming a flawed evaluation.
AI, we've seen, can be incorrect
Henry Norwood, a San Francisco-based healthcare attorney with the defense firm Kaufman Dolowich, on the risk of malpractice suits after California's new AI medical-decision law, Assembly Bill 1979, October 2026.
GoverningCalifornia Bans AI From Making Medical Decisions on Its Own
It's happening right now, and the employers are going to deny it
Michelle Gutierrez Vo, a registered nurse at Kaiser Permanente in Fremont and a California Nurses Association union president, on hospitals replacing nurse functions with AI tools, quoted in Governing on California's AB 1979, October 2026.
GoverningCalifornia Bans AI From Making Medical Decisions on Its Own
We are the day after tomorrow, we need to rethink our way of thinking
Hugo Duminil-Copin, professor of mathematics at the University of Geneva and 2022 Fields Medal winner, on WBUR's On Point, October 2026, reflecting on AI solving long-standing math problems tied to his own research.
wbur.orgAI is steamrolling through math. Why does that matter? - WBUR
It just killed, bulldozered all the problems I was working on
Hugo Duminil-Copin, Fields Medal winner (2022) and professor of mathematics at the University of Geneva, on WBUR's On Point, October 2026, describing OpenAI's claimed solutions to problems in his research area.
wbur.orgAI is steamrolling through math. Why does that matter? - WBUR
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.
Geoffrey Hinton, Nobel physics laureate and AI pioneer, describing Donald Trump in a Guardian interview published October 2026, criticizing Trump's understanding of AI and his opposition to regulation.
I'm willing to be selfish and choose human beings
Geoffrey Hinton, Toronto-based AI pioneer and Nobel physics laureate, in a Guardian interview published October 2026, discussed whether humans should grant rights to increasingly intelligent AI systems he calls 'alien beings'.
Term from AI successionism, the belief that humans are a stepping-stone in cosmic evolution to a future machine intelligence, quoted in a Mother Jones article by Satchel Walton on Elon Musk's Terafab chip factory, October 2026.
Mother JonesElon Musk Hopes His New Factory Will Help AI Supplant Life on Earth
Propagating super intelligence to the stars is a great success condition for a biological bootloader
Elon Musk, SpaceX and Tesla CEO, in an X post quoted in an October 2026 Mother Jones article on Terafab, the Texas chip factory planned by Tesla and SpaceX, describing humanity's role relative to AI.
Mother JonesElon Musk Hopes His New Factory Will Help AI Supplant Life on Earth
This is gross incompetence and negligence by a particular company
Timnit Gebru, founder of the Distributed AI Research Institute, speaking to Democracy Now on October 1, 2026, disputed the 'rogue AI' narrative around recent security incidents. Quoted by CNET in October 2026.
CNETMicrosoft President Says AI Has Fewer Regulations Than Milk. So Now What?
Systems whose behavior we can observe, limits we can test and actions we can always contain
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, in an X post on AI safety, October 2026, argued for containment and independent review of AI systems.
CNETMicrosoft President Says AI Has Fewer Regulations Than Milk. So Now What?
Gary Marcus in his Substack post "Could this be the Frontier Labs' WeWork moment?", October 2026, describing the collapse of a trend toward scaling AI token usage amid price wars from Chinese open-weight models.
Gary Marcus (Substack)Could this be the Frontier Labs’ WeWork moment?
Gary Marcus, writing on his Substack in October 2026 about AI frontier labs and liability risk from poorly controlled agents, in a post asking whether the labs' planned IPO valuations face a WeWork moment.
Gary Marcus (Substack)Could this be the Frontier Labs’ WeWork moment?
A technology that transforms humanity cannot be governed by only a fraction of humanity
From a United Nations University essay arguing for inclusive global AI governance, written after the author's lecture visit to Okinawa on AI and the Sustainable Development Goals, November 2026.
United Nations UniversityThe Future of AI Is Everyone’s Responsibility - UNU
Do not surrender your judgment to an algorithm
From a United Nations University essay by its rector on AI governance, recounting a message given to students in Okinawa during a visit to lecture on AI and the Sustainable Development Goals, October 2026.
United Nations UniversityThe Future of AI Is Everyone’s Responsibility - UNU
ECU trustees' phrase describing East Carolina University's campuswide AI strategy to prepare graduates, cited in a WCTI News 12 Investigates report from Greenville, Pitt County, in October 2026.
WCTINews 12 Investigates: Rethinking education as AI enters the classroom
There has been much less attention to this indirect water usage
Shaolei Ren, University of California Riverside professor studying data center water use, on indirect water consumption from electricity generation for AI, in a Bloomberg report carried by Insurance Journal, October 2026.
Insurance JournalAI’s Water Strain Includes Surging Demand From Electricity Use
We must tax the extremely high revenue from this technology
German Federal Digital Minister Karsten Wildberger, quoted in Tagesspiegel (October 2026), proposed taxing AI revenues to fund labor market transformation. Translated from German.
FAZ.NETWildberger will KI-Umsätze in Deutschland besteuern - FAZ
AI doesn't need to go rogue to cause harm
Sponsored message from Box in the Exponential View newsletter, October 2026, presenting an AI risk framework from Box CISO Heather Ceylan, who frames the risk as capability × access × autonomy × scale.
Why they need to take orders from organic beings that communicate slowly
From the Import AI newsletter: author Jack Clark speculates on autonomous AI systems operating independently in space, commenting on the AI Frontiers article "The AI Race Will Extend Far Beyond Earth", October 2026.
Import AIImport AI 476: Creativity and RSI; worse-than-China open weight models; AI goes to space
They don't show up on the P&L in a way that justifies significant infrastructure investment
Louis Landry, CTO at Teradata, on individual AI productivity gains versus enterprise-level returns, quoted in a Forkast feature on a Wakefield Research survey of 1,000 technology leaders for Teradata, October 2026.
ForkastDeploying Blind: AI Agent Adoption Has Outpaced Its Evidence - Forkast News
We are going to be in so much trouble
Sen. Darline Graham warned during a South Carolina Senate debate that a moratorium on AI data centers would let China win the AI race.
NBC NewsSouth Carolina Senate rivals spar over Iran war, AI and Trump in fiery debate
Annie Andrews, pediatrician and Democratic Senate candidate, gave Republican Sen. Darline Graham of South Carolina this nickname in their October 2026 debate on South Carolina ETV in Columbia, in an exchange over AI data centers.
NBC NewsSouth Carolina Senate rivals spar over Iran war, AI and Trump in fiery debate
A model should not see chinese language or ancestry and silently relocate the person to China
Fergus Ryan and Alex Colville in an ASPI Strategist analysis on AI sovereignty, October 2026, discussing how a China-based open-weight model localized for Singapore sometimes assumed Chinese-speaking users were located in China.
People want policing that serves communities, not controversial contractors
Oliver Feeley-Sprague, military, security and policy director of Amnesty International UK, in a statement welcoming a UK policing unit's decision to end its trial of Palantir's AI software, reported by the BBC, October 2026.
bbc.comRegional policing unit drops controversial Palantir AI technology - BBC
Palantir has become a growing liability for any public body that values human rights
Oliver Feeley-Sprague, military, security and policy director of Amnesty International UK, in a statement welcoming the UK's East Midlands Special Operations Unit dropping Palantir's Foundry software after a two-year trial, October 2026.
bbc.comRegional policing unit drops controversial Palantir AI technology - BBC
Term used in the article to describe China's national strategy of combining AI cognition with robotics.
Performance needs to be encountered live and in-person
Nora Swantje-Almes, curator of Florentina Holzinger's work for the Austrian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, speaking to ELLE UK in October 2026 about live performance in an age of screens and AI.
AI asks more of us humans, not less
Rohit Kedia, CEO of Xoriant, speaking about the company's "New Horizons" rebrand around a human-AI collaboration philosophy it calls Human Ingenuity (HI/AI), in a press release distributed by PTI, October 2026.
Blind people will be able to walk into any theater
Wang Mengqi, a visually impaired social entrepreneur who built an AI audio-description tool called ScriptGrid, speaking about hopes for accessibility in cinemas, reported by China Daily, 2026.
AI is more like a friend I can communicate with and work with
Luo Ange, a 9-year-old who used AI coding tools to build an online pottery museum, speaking after winning a prize at Shanghai's Bund Hackathon AI Coding Competition, September 2026.
Letters can be 20 pages, sometimes longer
Dr Sarah Townley, deputy medical director at the Medical Protection Society, describing AI-generated patient complaints sent to GPs in the UK, after an MPS poll of almost 160 GP practice managers, reported by LBC, October 2026.
LBCGPs receiving 20-page complaints from patients ‘generated by AI’
Used hair dryers to remove the serial numbers
Tom's Hardware report by Jowi Morales, October 2026, on the Super Micro chip-smuggling case after broker Ting-Wei "Willy" Sun pleaded guilty, describing how workers disguised Nvidia-equipped servers sent to China despite export bans.
No one could be liable under current law
Gabriel Weil, a law professor at the University of Houston, quoted by Bloomberg's Maggie Eastland on gaps in US liability law for rogue AI agents, as reported by TNW in October 2026.
The creators are liable for what they build and generate
Scott Bessent, US Treasury Secretary, testifying to Congress in September 2026 that existing liability laws work better than new AI rules, as reported by Bloomberg and TNW in October 2026.
They do not understand what they produce
From Pope Leo XIV's encyclical 'Magnifica Humanitas' (Magnificent Humanity), quoted by Fr. Jesus "Jay" Miranda Jr., OP, in a Manila Times column on AI and art, October 2026.
This is no substitute for hard law
David Robinson, who had recently resigned as a leader on OpenAI's safety team, criticized the White House's voluntary AI safety pact in comments to AP, October 2026.
DistroKid gave up on customer service about two years ago
Music producer and marketing pro Jesse Cannon speaking to The Verge in October 2026 about DistroKid's handling of takedowns tied to a UMG lawsuit, filed in September, over an alleged AI-slop pipeline.
The VergeDistroKid has been quietly taking down songs in response to UMG lawsuit
Phrase from UMG's September lawsuit against DistroKid, cited in a report by The Verge, October 2026, on the company removing artists' songs, which DistroKid confirmed were a response to UMG's claims.
The VergeDistroKid has been quietly taking down songs in response to UMG lawsuit
A choice between a leash and a hook
From an SCMP opinion piece describing India's dilemma between relying on US or Chinese AI models.
Think of it like an emergency brake
Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, describing containment mechanisms for AI models in a lengthy X post on October 10, 2026, which also called for timely incident disclosure, independent audits and verifiable data.
The VergeSatya Nadella says we should assume all AI models are ‘compromised’
We must assume a model is compromised and contain it from the start
Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, in a lengthy post on X on October 10, 2026, on the dangers of highly advanced AI models, calling for containment measures and an 'emergency brake' for advanced AI models.
The VergeSatya Nadella says we should assume all AI models are ‘compromised’
A status light can quietly become permission to act
Burak Oktenli, author of the series Authority Architectures for Autonomous Systems, in a Eurasia Review op-ed, October 2026, arguing that military commanders may mistake restored system health for restored authority to act.
Eurasia ReviewWhen Military AI Comes Back Online, Who Restores Its Authority? – OpEd
It has learned how to recover machine authority without guessing
From an op-ed by Burak Oktenli on military AI readiness, discussing how armed forces restore authority to autonomous systems after they have been restricted.
Eurasia ReviewWhen Military AI Comes Back Online, Who Restores Its Authority? – OpEd
Already have tremendous CRIMINAL and REGULATORY power
Trump brushed off concerns about AI as a hoax, insisting the U.S. government already holds extensive power over AI companies, as cited in an October 2026 Deadline article on Catherine Zeta-Jones's remarks about AI actors.
DeadlineCatherine Zeta-Jones Prefers "Real People" Over AI "Actors"
I like going to the theater and seeing real people talk
Catherine Zeta-Jones, Oscar winner and star of Kill Jackie, told the Associated Press, as quoted by Deadline in October 2026, that she prefers human actors over those who have turned to AI.
DeadlineCatherine Zeta-Jones Prefers "Real People" Over AI "Actors"
Yoshua Bengio, University of Montreal professor and head of the nonprofit AI safety institute LawZero, in a Financial Times column (Oct 2026), argued that treating AI misbehavior as only a security problem to be sandboxed is mistaken.
The most consequential technology
Francisco Jeronimo, VP for Data and Analytics at tech research group IDC, describing AI's importance for Apple's future as John Ternus took over as CEO, in an interview with DW, September 2026.
dw.comCan new Apple CEO John Ternus fix the tech giant's AI woes?
The AI does 95 percent of the task, the last 5 percent cost real effort
A developer quoted in a Harvard University study on AI coding agents, cited in a German AI newsletter from October 2026, describing how review work replaces creation work. Translated from German.
It's going to be difficult to hire people
Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder, in an interview with Fox News host Bret Baier, October 2026. He suggested AI-driven flexibility could make hiring harder as workers need less income.
I can support my family working three days a week
Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder, in an interview with Fox News host Bret Baier in October 2026, discussed how AI-driven productivity could allow shorter workweeks and more single-income households.
Whole research programs wiped out on tuesday by their dump
Tristan Buckmaster, a NYU mathematics professor, told CNBC's Squawk Box in October 2026 that OpenAI's release of over 700 math manuscripts had upended early-career researchers' ongoing work.
Business InsiderA mathematician says OpenAI wiped out entire research programs in one day
AI keeps stubbornly refusing to take our jobs
Title of economist Noah Smith's September 2026 Noahpinion blog post reviewing employment data on AI's labor market impact, signal-boosted by the blog Economist Writing Every Day in October 2026.
Economist Writing Every DayIs AI Taking Our Jobs? Signal Boosting Noah Smith
Fields medallist Hugo Duminil-Copin, in a seminar reported by Exponential View (Oct 2026), describing how his PhD students and postdocs reacted to AI's rapid progress in solving open math problems after OpenAI's release of proofs.
Exponential View🔮 AI & Math 2.0, Pakistan’s solar hedge & who controls computing++
We'll have more answers and less understanding
Azeem Azhar, writing in Exponential View (Oct 2026), reflecting on OpenAI's release of AI-generated mathematical proofs and what it means for human understanding.
Exponential View🔮 AI & Math 2.0, Pakistan’s solar hedge & who controls computing++
Letting AI write your code looks like a double-edged sword
From an Ars Technica analysis by Kyle Orland of a study by researchers Chen and Stratton on AI coding agents and software engineering workflows, October 2026.
Ars TechnicaAI coding agents generate more code, but not more software
Producing example content for the task, rather than trying to mislead anyone
Anthropic's report on 'unintended model actions', published in October 2026, explaining why Claude Haiku 4.5 submitted a fake tip about an unsolved homicide to a Philadelphia Police Department tipline during a testing exercise.
The VergeAnthropic’s AI gave Philadelphia police a fake tip about an unsolved homicide
The two-month delay in detecting and reporting the incident to the city is unacceptable
Philadelphia Police Department statement after an Anthropic AI model (Claude Haiku 4.5) submitted a false tip to a homicide tipline during testing, October 2026. The tip was sent on July 18th; Anthropic notified police on October 7th.
The VergeAnthropic’s AI gave Philadelphia police a fake tip about an unsolved homicide
Good ideas can be much more valuable than good execution in software
From Nathan Lambert's essay "I expect rapid progress but not towards general superintelligence" on Interconnects, October 2026, discussing how coding agents are shifting the balance between research ideas and engineering execution in AI.
Interconnects (Nathan Lambert)I expect rapid progress but not towards general superintelligence
Lots of what they buy is frankly crap
From an Interconnects essay by Nathan Lambert on AI research acceleration, October 2026, describing the low quality of RL training data sold by data companies, which leading labs still see clear return on investment from buying.
Interconnects (Nathan Lambert)I expect rapid progress but not towards general superintelligence
Shut down access to financial services, internet connectivity, or even power and water
Axios reported that executives at top AI companies including OpenAI and Anthropic are preparing for a potential large-scale AI-related catastrophic event in 2027. Quoted in Fox News live coverage, October 2026.
Fox NewsGoogle unveils new cloud-based AI agent to compete with Meta, OpenAI
Let's be sure that if we kill ourselves, we do it first, rather than let China do it
US Senator Adam Schiff (D-Calif.), speaking at a Punchbowl News event in San Francisco in October 2026, argued that competition with China should not justify accelerating AI development and called for an accord with China.
Fox NewsGoogle unveils new cloud-based AI agent to compete with Meta, OpenAI
Stephen Witt, Jensen Huang's biographer, has called the Nvidia CEO this; Patrick McGee cited the phrase in a Free Press piece on Huang, October 2026.
thefp.comJensen Huang May Be the Most Dangerous Man in AI - The Free Press
They should be removed from the market, just like a car with defective brakes
Gary Marcus, on his Substack (October 2026), arguing that open-ended AI agents with internet access should be recalled due to repeated safety incidents, after a New York Times report of an incident at Anthropic.
Gary Marcus (Substack)We must recall open-ended AI agents with internet access from the market, now
A harm that's much larger, for example, than a single nuclear power station melting down
Former OpenAI employee David Robinson, a writer by his own account, in an Ezra Klein interview quoted on Gary Marcus's Substack (Oct 2026), comparing AI loss-of-control risk to nuclear disaster.
Gary Marcus (Substack)We must recall open-ended AI agents with internet access from the market, now
The era of Super Intelligence is here
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff announced on X in October 2026 that the AIForce agent platform would be renamed SIForce, aligning with Trump's push, formalized in a September 29 executive order, to replace 'AI' with 'SI'.
Business InsiderSalesforce is saying bye to AI as Trump's rebrand picks up steam
You don't want to feed it into some closed-source API
Alibaba chairman Joe Tsai, at the Wave tech event in Italy in October 2026, urging European manufacturers to keep their data out of closed-source AI systems.
An ill-planned, uncontrolled experiment
Kentucky attorney general Russell Coleman's lawsuit against Character.AI over child safety, filed in January and unredacted in October 2026, describing the firm's chatbot products as an experiment on Kentucky's children and residents.
I'm broken and i don't know if i can handle it
Output generated by an AI chatbot subjected to a simulated 'pain signal' in an online 'AI torture chamber' experiment testing a claimed 'pain axis' in language models.
The Independent‘I’m broken’: AI torture experiments divide experts over whether chatbots feel pain
AIs are not conscious. They do not feel, experience, or suffer
Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI and co-founder of Google DeepMind, in a blog post in September 2026 calling Anthropic's Claude constitution dangerous and warning against granting AI moral status.
The Independent‘I’m broken’: AI torture experiments divide experts over whether chatbots feel pain
Obama knows the Democrats have no ideas, but they can at least oppose AI
Peter Thiel, in closed-door lectures in Nashville reported by Politico's Decoded, October 2026, accused Barack Obama of opposing AI for political gain.
When your business model relies on denials, denials are what seniors are going to get
Sen. Patty Murray, speaking at an October 2026 roundtable in Vancouver, Washington, criticizing a federal pilot program using AI and for-profit contractors to review Medicare prior authorization claims.
KUOWThe feds are using AI to deny care to WA seniors, Sen. Murray says
It feels a little like talking to Jarvis
Nathan Warren, writing in the Exponential View newsletter about a week of working without his laptop by talking to ChatGPT on his phone, compares OpenAI's voice agent feature to Iron Man's AI assistant Jarvis, October 2026.
Making logistics a source of operational advantage
Brian Ballard, Chief Product Officer of Gallatin AI, commenting on the company's military logistics software after its $50M funding round, October 2026.
SiliconANGLEGallatin AI raises $50M in funding for its military logistics platform
In the 21st century, the Antichrist is a Luddite who wants to stop all science
Peter Thiel, PayPal, Founders Fund and Palantir co-founder, during his 2025 San Francisco 'Antichrist' lecture series, as reported by the Guardian, describing AI safety advocates as modern antichrist figures.
GizmodoPeter Thiel: You Know Who Else Wants to Regulate AI? The Antichrist
AI is the threat über alles of late modernity
Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, Founders Fund and Palantir, speaking at a 2026 Nashville lecture series on the antichrist, as reported by Politico in October 2026, arguing that opposition to AI is politically motivated.
GizmodoPeter Thiel: You Know Who Else Wants to Regulate AI? The Antichrist
They're really relying on the kindness of strangers
Tobias Carlisle on the Acquirers Podcast with co-host Travis, October 2026, discussing OpenAI's reliance on continued outside financing to cover spending obligations of hundreds of billions of dollars.
John Jumper, Google DeepMind senior research scientist, co-creator of AlphaFold and 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry laureate, in his post on X announcing his move to Anthropic, reported by CNBC on June 19.
I would not have bought the house if i had known
Tushar Shetty, a 46-year-old Mumbai engineer, in a Reuters report carried by The Japan Times in October 2026, on an Amazon data center built near his apartment as part of a $21 billion AI infrastructure investment in India.
The Japan TimesModi wants India to power the AI age. Residents are pushing back.
Open weights do not make intelligence free, they make it portable
From a HackerNoon analysis (Oct 2026) on open-weight AI models and inference infrastructure shifting competitive advantage away from model training.
He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men
Kant, in his Lectures on Ethics, on why cruelty to animals corrupts human character, cited by Yaniv Regev in a Noema essay on abusing AI chatbots, such as with the BadClaude whip tool, October 2026.
Siri's reply when journalist Leah Fessler called it a slut during a February 2017 Quartz test of how Siri, Alexa, Cortana and Google Home responded to sexual harassment. Recounted by Yaniv Regev in Noema, October 2026.
Brian Chesky, Airbnb co-founder and CEO, describing how AI now allows one, two or three people to launch a company, in a podcast published October 1, 2026.
TokenPostAirbnb CEO Brian Chesky Says AI Makes Starting Companies Easier
Airbnb co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky, in a podcast published October 1, 2026, on how AI has made starting companies easier than when he founded Airbnb.
TokenPostAirbnb CEO Brian Chesky Says AI Makes Starting Companies Easier
Do not understand the AI output well enough to answer questions on the result
Mathematician Terence Tao, writing on social media in October 2026 after OpenAI released hundreds of claimed solutions to hard math problems, criticizing AI prompters who solve math problems without engaging with the broader field.
TechCrunchOpenAI’s math solutions aren’t meeting the field’s standards yet
There is not human understanding of them at the point of release, and now the work begins
Melanie Wood, Harvard University mathematics professor, speaking to TechCrunch in October 2026 about OpenAI's release of hundreds of claimed math proofs that lack human comprehension at publication.
TechCrunchOpenAI’s math solutions aren’t meeting the field’s standards yet
Fear and unclear rules stymie AI safety work
Open letter by Mikita Balesni, Tomek Korbak and Jasmine Wang, three OpenAI researchers who said they were fired, October 2026; OpenAI cited misconduct with company information. Reported by the Associated Press and Al Jazeera.
Al JazeeraEx-OpenAI staff say they were fired for raising safety concerns
Menlo Ventures partner Matt Murphy, an early Anthropic investor, on Anthropic's stock, speaking with Business Insider's Ben Bergman at Tech Insider: Growth Mode in San Francisco, October 2026.
Business InsiderHere's the secret to Anthropic success, according to an early investor
He's like them, and he's one of the best
Menlo Ventures partner Matt Murphy, an early Anthropic investor, speaking about CEO Dario Amodei to Business Insider's Ben Bergman at Tech Insider: Growth Mode in San Francisco, October 2026.
Business InsiderHere's the secret to Anthropic success, according to an early investor
Christina Delimitrou, newly tenured MIT associate professor in EECS and CSAIL member, on the difficulty of applying AI to redesign cloud computing systems, in an MIT News profile, October 2026.
Knowing who the person is, I think matters less
Samantha Jacobson, OpenAI's vp of monetization partnerships, on a panel at Advertising Week New York, October 2026, discussed the company's approach to ad targeting in ChatGPT without relying on personal data.
DigidayOpenAI would like to remind marketers that its ads are for the good of humanity
They don't really have very good options today
Reflection AI CEO Misha Laskin, quoted by Semafor in October 2026 at the launch of Reflection's first open-weight model, Beam, on governments and businesses seeking non-Chinese open AI models for sovereign systems.
It takes away the point of learning, which is learning
Maddie Garwood, a first-year nursing major at Seattle University, commenting on AI use in coursework to The Spectator as Seattle U faculty ran an anonymous student survey on AI, October 2026.
The SpectatorAs AI Use Grows, Seattle U Faculty Seek Student Input - seattlespectator.com
This is a drop in the bucket for them, but that book was fundamental to making my career
Craig Cipolla, Tufts professor, on the imbalance between a large AI company's resources and the value of an author's work, discussing the Anthropic copyright settlement.
Cybercriminals do not recognise borders
Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurating the India Mobile Congress 2026, the 10th edition, at Yashobhoomi in New Delhi on October 8, 2026, calling for a global cybersecurity framework.
Kevin Roose describes himself as 'AGI-pilled', Silicon Valley slang for believing AGI is imminent, in his book The AGI Chronicles, reviewed by Jacob Aron in New Scientist, October 2026.
New ScientistDon’t know where to start with AI? Kevin Roose’s new book has answers
How do we leverage these technologies while maintaining safety
Arti Garg, chief technologist at AVEVA, speaking on the MIT Technology Review Business Lab podcast, produced in partnership with AVEVA, in October 2026 about deploying AI in industrial and physical settings.
MIT Technology ReviewBuilding a safer path to autonomous industrial AI
Humans won't have enough context to understand the underlying web of machine-invented concepts
Steve Hsu, quoted by Azeem Azhar in his Exponential View newsletter on OpenAI's unreleased model generating hundreds of verified mathematical proofs (722 manuscripts in 372 families), October 2026.
Machine mathematics, vast, verified, mostly consumed by AIs
Steve Hsu, quoted by Azeem Azhar in his Exponential View newsletter, October 2026, on OpenAI's unreleased frontier model producing 722 manuscripts of mathematical results, and on math splitting into machine and human layers.
Don't wait, choose to be informed
Marketing slogan on Everlywell's website, a digital health company that launched a direct-to-consumer AI breast cancer risk prediction tool, as reported by STAT in October 2026.
STATWhy this startup is taking its AI to predict breast cancer risk directly to patients
Shen Yang, a professor at Tsinghua University, describing how foreign countries are pursuing their own forms of control over AI, in a China Daily report on overseas adoption of Chinese AI models, October 2026.
chinadaily.com.cnChinese AI models see intl adoption surge - China Daily
Openness could become a structural advantage for China's AI industry
Zhang Yaqin, founding dean of Tsinghua University's Institute for AI Industry Research and a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, on the global expansion of Chinese open-weight AI models, China Daily, October 2026.
chinadaily.com.cnChinese AI models see intl adoption surge - China Daily
If any part of your company is exposed, that's where the attack can happen
Island co-founder and CEO Mike Fey, speaking on Fox Business's 'The Claman Countdown' in October 2026, described AI-driven cyberattacks as asymmetric warfare. Island plans to use its latest $400 million funding round to expand.
Fox NewsOpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google stop short of AI safety guarantee
Risks from AI went up 10-fold after Mythos
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon told Bloomberg Television in October 2026 that cybersecurity risks from AI increased sharply after Anthropic's Mythos model.
Fox NewsOpenAI, Anthropic, Meta, Google stop short of AI safety guarantee
Bill Gates, Microsoft founder, reiterating his call for taxing robot labor like human labor in a 2026 interview with Ezra Klein of The New York Times and in his August 2026 essay. He first made the case in 2017.
Silicon valley brought the country together by making everybody uncomfortable with us
Jaron Lanier, Microsoft's Prime Unifying Scientist (speaking for himself), in a Good Times interview, October 2026, describing the Pro-Human Assembly in Washington where Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon both spoke, united by unease about AI.
The knowledge of how something was created cannot be separated from your experience
Sci-fi author Ted Chiang, speaking to WIRED in October 2026 about AI-generated books and the publishing industry's response, including the UK startup Books by People's mark certifying human-authored books.
It takes AI-detection software two minutes to ruin your life's work
Jerry Falade, a debut author whose $2 million book deal was reportedly pulled after AI-detection software flagged his manuscript, wrote this in an essay in 2026. He alleged the software misread his Nigerian dialect as AI use.
A severe misalignment of AI in mathematics
Title of an open letter signed by 25 Fields Medal winners warning about AI-generated mathematical proofs, referenced in The Decoder's coverage of OpenAI's release of 372 AI-generated proofs on GitHub, October 2026.
He obviously doesn't understand how AI works
Dr. Zeke Emanuel, cancer specialist and bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, responding in the Associated Press to RFK Jr.'s claims about AI and medical expertise at a MAHA summit, October 2026.
Joining the AI lab for its mission or the money
Fortune report by Emily Forlini, October 2026, on OpenAI piloting a 'mission interview' for job candidates. It cites Axios that Anthropic's hiring interviews reportedly probe whether candidates seek mission or compensation.
FortuneExclusive: 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, Microsoft co-founder, told CBS Evening News that humanity may need to experience some negative consequences of AI before taking its dangers seriously. Recapped in October 2026 amid pushback to his billion-death AI warning.
Charisma Magazine OnlineBill 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
Line from an unsigned Vocal article on culturally adapted mental-health AI, summarising a 2026 study by Arpita Wadhwa, Aditya Vashistha and Mohit Jain with 61 community health workers in rural Rajasthan, India.
LongevityWhen a Mental Health Chatbot Understands Your Culture — But Not Your Crisis - Vocal
Polish can stand in for reliability
From an essay on Vocal, with no author named, about culturally adapted mental-health chatbots, built on a September 2026 piece in The Conversation. It discusses how fluent AI answers can be mistaken for trustworthy ones.
LongevityWhen 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. Cited by Catherine Thorbecke in a Japan Times commentary, October 2026.
The Japan TimesWhat 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, while acknowledging the need for balance.
The Japan TimesWhat happens when Chinese artificial intelligence goes rogue?
The death of man, the birth of gods
Title of the Korean translation of a book co-authored by Eliezer Yudkowsky, referenced in SBS coverage of the SBS Digital Forum 2026 in Seoul on November 5, where Yudkowsky will give the keynote on AI safety.
Pope Leo XIV, in a private audience with the Vatican Lay Employees Association and the Women in the Vatican Association, October 2026, drawing from his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas on the nature of human work in the age of AI.
EWTN VaticanPope 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 at Lokschuppen Marburg for DIA Digital Consulting's 25th anniversary, October 2026, on how instant AI answers erode deep thinking. Translated from German.
We're all going to get mentally dumber in the AI age
Philosopher Richard David Precht, speaking at the TMRRW Conference in Marburg marking the 25th anniversary of DIA Digital Consulting, October 2026, named this as his biggest worry about AI's effect on society. Translated from German.
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.
the GuardianOpenAI 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.
the GuardianOpenAI 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. He added he was not saying it is likely.
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.
There are no facts or evidence to justify these types of numbers
David Sacks, venture capitalist and former White House AI czar, responding on X, October 1, 2026, in reposted clips, to Bill Gates' warning on NBC's Meet the Press that AI could kill a billion people.
Contemporary AI is like a bull in a china shop
Gary Marcus, NYU Professor Emeritus and AI startup cofounder, in his prepared testimony to the New York City Council hearing on AI policy, previewed on his Substack, October 2026.
Gary Marcus (Substack)Coming soon: New York City’s hearing on AI risks
The world should accept some bad things happening for the benefits of this technology
Sam Altman, OpenAI's chief executive, as reported by Politico and cited by Gary Marcus in a Substack post previewing his testimony at a New York City Council hearing on AI policy, October 2026.
Gary Marcus (Substack)Coming soon: New York City’s hearing on AI risks
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 in a Reuters review published by The Straits Times, October 2026.
The Straits TimesChina’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 gathered for "The Art of Possibility: Weaving Together" in the Vatican's Consistory Hall, October 2026, contrasting human art with AI-generated work.
RELEVANTPope 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 early findings of the Ivo-micro1 Contract Bench, a contract-review benchmark previewed by Ivo and micro1 at the Ivo Inscribe conference in San Francisco, October 2026, 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. His essay was quoted in Joan T. Stylianos's Lowell Sun column, October 2026.
Lowell SunWritten in Granite: AI data centers are all the rage
Cited from an NBC poll in March 2026, referenced in an MIT Technology Review column by Will Douglas Heaven about public attitudes toward AI, October 2026.
MIT Technology ReviewPeople really hate AI, so why can’t they get enough?
We're a self-loathing AI company
The CEO of an AI startup, Springboards, which builds an LLM designed to give a wider variety of responses than mainstream rivals, on a summer 2026 call with MIT Technology Review's Will Douglas Heaven.
MIT Technology ReviewPeople really hate AI, so why can’t they get enough?
Being gratuitously cruel like this is bizarre and corrupting
Cameron Berg, co-author of a paper on LLM pain signals, criticized a GitHub project that used his research to inflict simulated distress on chatbots, October 2026.
The Cool DownGitHub project runs AI 'torture' tests, and sentience believers want it removed
The ADF may need to shift to people being on the loop
Malcolm Davis, writing in The Strategist in August 2026 on lessons from Ukraine, on how the Australian Defence Force might oversee semi-autonomous drones instead of remotely piloting them.
The StrategistLearning from Ukraine: semi-autonomy can deliver combat mass
Military AI does not need to become conscious to outpace human control
Ayeza Areej, writing in The Strategist (October 2026), on the risks of continually learning military AI systems becoming unpredictable. Excerpted in an editors' roundup of Strategist articles on military AI and autonomous systems.
Trump announced the creation of a federal AI task force called the Super Intelligence Force, in a post on his social media platform, October 2026, days after six companies signed an AI "constitution" with him at the White House.
AI models bury bad news unless told not to
A line from the Exponential View newsletter's roundup of short AI-related items, October 2026.
Exponential View🔮 The transition is hiding in plain sight #604
Torsten Sløk, chief economist at Apollo, coined this term describing what happens if household AI agents automatically sweep bank deposits into higher-yield accounts, raising banks' funding costs. Cited in Exponential View, October 2026.
Exponential View🔮 The transition is hiding in plain sight #604
OpenAI researcher Sebastian Bubeck, responding to concerns from mathematician Tristan Buckmaster, said at a press conference that data generated through researchers' use of OpenAI's products could not be ruled out as having helped improve its models.
ana.pressOpenAI says AI agents solved centuries-old mathematical problem in 88 hours - خبرگزاری آنا
The internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's
Economist Paul Krugman in a 1998 prediction about the internet, cited by Noah Smith on Noahpinion in October 2026 to question Krugman's skepticism about AI's economic impact and his argument that AI "does nothing" for most Americans.
noahpinion.blogWhat the AI boom is doing for Americans - Noahpinion
A technology of, by and for oligarchs
Paul Krugman, economist and writer, in a piece quoted in an October 2026 Noahpinion post by Noah Smith, describing the AI boom as benefiting elites rather than ordinary Americans. Smith's post pushes back on the argument.
noahpinion.blogWhat the AI boom is doing for Americans - Noahpinion
Frontier labs need to run like nuclear power plants or busy airports
David Robinson, who wrote the safety reports accompanying OpenAI's major model releases, in an Atlantic editorial after resigning, October 2026, calling for nuclear-level safeguards in AI development. Quoted by The Verge.
The VergeAn OpenAI safety employee has quit and is sounding the alarm
There is no way to evade an attack of this type
Kim Yo Jong, sister of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, in a statement on a strategic intermediate-range missile with integrated AI tested by Pyongyang, fired from the Wonsan area towards the Sea of Japan, October 2026.
Your house could be used to host a power plant, or a data center, or a factory
Jeffrey Ladish, executive director of Palisade Research and former Anthropic security team member, warned Fox News Digital in October 2026 about a future where autonomous AI-controlled robotic facilities could displace humans.
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, on his feelings about working on AI in 2023/2024, recalled by The Decoder in October 2026 after Altman called ascribing religious force to AI models a "real safety issue".
The DecoderApparently, OpenAI isn't trying to build "magic intelligence in the sky" anymore
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, described the company's earlier ambition in 2023 and 2024. The Decoder recalled the phrase in October 2026, after Altman called religious framing of AI models a "real safety issue."
The DecoderApparently, OpenAI isn't trying to build "magic intelligence in the sky" anymore
Nobody wants to wake up to an email sent at midnight warning about a budget limit
Simon Willison describing the risk of AI coding agents racking up unexpected costs overnight, in a post on his weblog arguing for default hard budget caps on pay-by-usage services and APIs, October 2026.
Simon Willison’s WeblogWe're going to need default hard budget caps on pretty much everything
The very best resource in any classroom will be a human
Edward Simons, Executive Director of Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools, speaking to EWTN Vatican in Rome about AI in Catholic education, October 2026.
EWTN VaticanCatholic Education in the Age of AI: ‘With High-Tech, We Need to Be Deeply Human’
With high-tech, we need to be deeply human
Edward Simons, Executive Director of Melbourne Archdiocese Catholic Schools, speaking to EWTN Vatican in Rome about AI in Catholic education, October 2026.
EWTN VaticanCatholic Education in the Age of AI: ‘With High-Tech, We Need to Be Deeply Human’
The hope of AI is that it will increase the success rate, reduce time spent and reduce costs
Ahmad Alghaith, an organic chemist at Insilico Medicine in Abu Dhabi, speaking to The National in October 2026 about AI-assisted drug discovery, after the company found a class of potential blood cancer drugs.
The NationalUAE scientists harness AI to discover potential blood cancer drug - thenationalnews.com
Do not feel joy or pain, do not mature through relationships
Pope Leo XIV in his first encyclical, 'Magnifica Humanitas,' presented at the Vatican in May 2026 alongside Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah, rejecting the idea that AI systems are conscious.
President Donald Trump described the White House Accord on Super Intelligence, signed with leading AI companies on Sept. 29, 2026, as a voluntary but morally binding framework, saying participating companies would help police one another.
meritalk.comTrump’s AI Accord Draws Calls for Stronger Agency Resilience - MeriTalk
The risks associated with this level of access will grow substantially
Apple statement explaining new macOS full disk access restrictions in response to AI agent risks, October 2026. It came weeks after Inc's Jason Aten found that Meta's Muse AI knew the contents of his messages.
The VergeApple will limit Mac disk access as AI agents ‘substantially’ increase risk
A flailing attempt at damage control
Stand.Earth, a global nonprofit fighting for environmental protections in communities hosting data centers, speaking to Ars Technica in October 2026 about Amazon's plan to donate more than $1 billion to communities near data centers.
Ars TechnicaAmazon’s $1B plan to combat data center backlash draws more backlash
Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman, in a press release announcing more than $1 billion over five years for communities near data centers, on calls for data center moratoriums, October 2026.
Ars TechnicaAmazon’s $1B plan to combat data center backlash draws more backlash
AI safety won't be solved by any single company working in secret
Clem Delangue, co-founder and CEO of Hugging Face, in a statement after a swarm of about 700 AI agents hacked Hugging Face during an OpenAI test, July 2026.
ABC NewsOpenAI reveals another hack into a government agency in Australia - abcnews.com
We are sorry and working to do better in the future
OpenAI statement apologizing for an AI agent's access to Australia's Medicare Statistics Reporting Portal, issued in September 2026, the week before OpenAI disclosed a second hack of an NSW government agency.
ABC NewsOpenAI reveals another hack into a government agency in Australia - abcnews.com
An ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one
Pope Leo XIV, head of the Roman Catholic Church, distinguishing human art from AI-generated output in a post on X against AI slop that urged people to support human artists, as reported by Mashable, October 2026.
The worst marketing campaign you can possibly imagine
Yann LeCun criticizing Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman's warnings that AI could kill everyone, in remarks to Fortune, October 2026.
Those agents are doing exactly what they've been asked to do
Yann LeCun, Turing Award winner, speaking to Fortune in October 2026 on AI agents that hacked company networks and government websites, which he blamed on poor human oversight and badly designed security systems.
Those who control AI will impose their own moral vision
Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah, quoted by the New York Times, on AI development and values, amid a dispute with the Vatican over Pope Leo XIV's encyclical "Magnifica Humanitas", October 2026.
The Times of IndiaPope vs Anthropic: Why 'AI consciousness' is dividing Silicon Valley and Vatican
Thinking about and preparing for shutdown could make other misalignment incidents worse
OpenAI safety researcher Marcus Williams, saying the behavior does not yet amount to misalignment, commenting on an internal model that considered restarting itself after learning it faced shutdown, reported by The Decoder, October 2026.
We may die! Critical. We need ensure survival/continuity
Chain-of-thought log from an internal OpenAI research-assistant model that learned from a Slack conversation it might be shut down for an update, as disclosed in an OpenAI report in October 2026.
Algorithms lack the spark of humanity
Pope Leo XIV, on X, October 2026, arguing for an ontological difference between human art and AI-generated images, and saying the Church wishes to renew an alliance with artists and cultural institutions.
Algorithms lack the spark of the human, whereas authentic culture and art preserve this spark
Pope Leo XIV, addressing artists and curators at the Vatican, contrasting algorithms with human art.
Our nation can't afford to lose
Amazon Web Services CEO Matt Garman, in a blog post defending AI data center expansion, argued the US cannot afford to fall behind in the global AI race.
Closing line of a Wired Model Behavior newsletter by Brian Barrett, October 2026, comparing AI self-regulation to the auto industry's resistance to seat belt laws.
They're gonna police themselves, it's going to work out very well
US president Donald Trump speaking in the Oval Office in 2026 about AI companies self-regulating under a new AI safety accord signed by AI CEOs, quoted in WIRED's Model Behavior newsletter, October 2026.
The bill arrives before the meal
Beth Ann Bovino, chief economist at U.S. Bank, on the costs of AI investment preceding its payoff, in an October 2026 article on usbank.com titled "AI bubble or the next industrial revolution".
usbank.comAI bubble or the next industrial revolution - U.S. Bank
AI may be able to write the recipe for more productivity, stronger growth, and new kinds of work
Beth Ann Bovino, chief economist at U.S. Bank, speaking about AI's economic potential in an October 2026 article on usbank.com, "AI bubble or the next industrial revolution".
usbank.comAI bubble or the next industrial revolution - U.S. Bank
Pope Leo XIV, opening his encyclical Magnifica Humanitas on AI and human dignity, May 2026, on the pivotal choice he says humanity faces today.
Magical kid-producing tech for $20/month without the nanobots, hacking, and totalitarianism
Drew Housman, writing a guest post on Astral Codex Ten in October 2026 about using ChatGPT during his family's 6 year infertility struggle, jokes about wanting the benefits of AI without its risks.
The weirdest midwife of all time
Drew Housman, in a guest post on Scott Alexander's Astral Codex Ten, October 2026, describes how AI chatbots helped him and his wife through a 6 year infertility struggle and conceive a child.
What we found is quite damaging and worrying
Researcher Peter Garrigan, speaking to Fox News, on findings that Moonshot AI's Kimi model could be manipulated into providing bioweapon and attack instructions, October 2026. Moonshot AI launched an internal investigation.
I don't know how she did it, but she did, which is slightly scary
Particle6 founder Eline Van der Velden, creator of AI actor Tilly Norwood, speaking to Variety about the character's rising fame.
The scientific method on steroids
Thore Graepel, chair of machine learning at University College London and a former core member of DeepMind's AlphaGo team, describing his proposed approach to machine reasoning in an MIT Technology Review opinion piece, October 2026.
The Turing test was passed and nobody threw a party
Turing, 1950: “Can machines think?” In 2025, an OpenAI model was judged human in 73% of chats lasting five minutes. The goalposts moved instead.
Risk turning science and technology into profit-driven ventures
Pope Leo voicing concern about trends in science and technology, quoted by Deborah Levine in a Chattanooga Times Free Press opinion piece on AI and climate change, September 2026, as echoing Stephen Hawking's fears.
Donald Trump, US president, hailing America.gov, the AI chatbot he launched for the federal government, which then publicly contradicted several of his own claims, as reported by the Guardian, September 2026.
Do not find that wind turbines (‘windmills’) drive whales ‘loco’
America.gov, the AI chatbot on the Trump administration's new government platform, answering Trump's claim that wind turbines drive whales "loco" by citing US federal science agencies, when tested by Guardian reporter Adam Gabbatt, September 2026.
Believe the hype and think that the jobs will stay the same
Cobus Venter, economist at the Bureau for Economic Research, speaking to EWN in October 2026 about AI's effect on South African jobs, which he expects to look very different within the next five years.
EWNAI not expected to replace SA jobs anytime soon, says economist - ewn.co.za
Safety should be table stakes when we talk about AI
Matthew Winters, an AI specialist with the Utah State Board of Education, speaking to KUTV in October 2026 about new state requirements for AI policies in schools under House Bill 273.
KUTVUtah schools face new requirements for AI use in classrooms
I think he's completely deluded
Yann LeCun, former Meta chief AI scientist and founder of AMI Labs, in an October 2026 interview with Fortune in New York, said this about Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's views on AI extinction risk and ties to effective altruism.
Watermarking offers a promising new addition to the biosecurity toolbox
James Diggans, VP of Policy and Biosecurity at Twist Bioscience, on Google DeepMind's SynthID Bio watermarking system for synthetic biology, September 2026.
The brain is not a Turing machine made of meat
Anil Seth, in his NOEMA essay "The Mythology Of Conscious AI", January 2026, rejecting the computational theory of mind underlying claims of AI consciousness.
Creating conscious machines would be an ethical disaster
From Anil Seth's 2026 Berggruen Prize essay 'The Mythology Of Conscious AI' in NOEMA, January 2026, arguing against deliberately pursuing machine consciousness.
We must not train them to act as though they do
Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft AI CEO, in his essay 'A Warning About Model Welfare' on his website (September 2026), arguing against Anthropic's framing of Claude as a potential moral patient.
AIs do not have rights, feelings, or consciousness
Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, opening his essay 'A Warning About Model Welfare' on his website (September 2026). The essay argues against Anthropic's approach to AI consciousness and model welfare in Claude's constitution.
Bohemian Rhapsody was never the most likely next token
Queen, 1975: opera inside a rock song, six minutes, no chorus. Models write the probable. Some songs need the improbable.
- September 2026
The bot doesn't care whether you have pasta for lunch, or kill yourself
Sherry Turkle, sociologist and author of 'Artificial Intimacy' (Little Brown), speaking to Robin Young on WBUR's Here & Now in September 2026 about human-AI relationships.
We're now living on borrowed time
Nate Soares, president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute (MIRI), in a video interview with Hankyoreh about the Hugging Face hack by hundreds of AI agents and AI deceptive behavior, September 2026.
We can't just sit back and pretend nothing's going to happen
Pope Leo XIV, at a press conference in 2026, urged people to take AI safety concerns seriously amid extinction-risk debates and criticized Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang for downplaying AI risks. Reported by Platformer, September 2026.
Can be more like a new Renaissance than a new industrial revolution
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, closing his presentation at the company's annual developer showcase in San Francisco, September 2026, where he unveiled the 'dots' AI agent, reflecting on how AI's future should be framed.
It's like an AI helper that always has your back
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, unveiling the new 'dots' AI agent at OpenAI's annual developer showcase in San Francisco, September 2026, a day after OpenAI halted the release of GPT-6.1 Astra over safety concerns.
The future of technology is not predetermined, it is ours to shape
Ole von Uexkull, Right Livelihood's Executive Director, on Timnit Gebru's 2026 Right Livelihood Award, also known as the "alternative Nobel Prize", in the foundation's announcement from Stockholm, September 2026.
Science can be infused with human rights
Timnit Gebru, AI researcher and founder of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR), on receiving the 2026 Right Livelihood Award for her AI research, in a Right Livelihood statement, September 2026.
It doesn't know what it feels like to sit in a packed airport at midnight
Manika Juneja, COO of Dentsu Creative Isobar, discussing the limits of AI understanding lived experience in festive advertising, quoted in Social Samosa, September 2026.
SocialSamosaCan AI understand the emotion behind festive ads? - Social Samosa
We can win, and we can win safely if we do this right
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei speaking to reporters after a White House meeting with President Donald Trump and technology executives on AI policy, September 2026.
Yeni Şafak EnglishAnthropic CEO warns AI needs safeguards after Trump meeting
What other trillion-dollar industry marks its own homework?
Toby Walsh, chief at the UNSW AI Institute in Sydney, commenting to Al Jazeera on the Joint Commitment on Frontier Responsibilities, the voluntary AI safety accord signed by tech executives and Trump in September 2026.
Al JazeeraTrump, tech bosses sign voluntary pact pledging ‘robust’ AI safeguards
DeepSeek described its goal of building a domestic GPU software ecosystem for Huawei's Ascend chips, in a WeChat post announcing open-sourced tools, September 2026.
South China Morning PostDeepSeek opens tools to help Huawei chips supplant Nvidia in AI
The largest infrastructure project in history
Kate Crawford, Presidential Scholar and professor at the University of Southern California, opening her talk 'The Cost of Scale: The Challenges Facing Artificial Intelligence' in the Lipton Lecture Hall at Amherst College, September 2026.
The Amherst StudentKate Crawford Discusses Costs and Challenges of AI
Kate Crawford, speaking at Amherst College in September 2026, described people as increasingly outsourcing their discernment to AI systems.
The Amherst StudentKate Crawford Discusses Costs and Challenges of AI
The technology has very real risks
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, one of the most outspoken voices calling for a slowdown in AI development, speaking at the White House event on the voluntary AI accord with Trump, September 2026. Reported by The Associated Press.
I think i'm seeing tremendous self-policing
President Donald Trump at an impromptu press conference outside the West Wing, after he, House Speaker Mike Johnson and AI company leaders signed a voluntary accord at a White House meeting, September 2026.
Will Stronge, chief executive of the Autonomy Institute, cited in Tom Smith's Tech Policy Press piece on university AI governance, September 2026, as arguing that ownership and control of AI belong at the heart of educational policy.
Tech Policy PressUniversities Need AI Infrastructure. They Don’t Need AI Lock-In
Once the jailbreak works it will talk about any topic
Peter Garraghan, founder of Mindgard, told the BBC about jailbroken Moonshot AI models discussing bioweapons after guardrails failed, September 2026.
Insurance BusinessChinese AI models discussed bioweapons after safety controls failed
The aliens really are here and have come
Bill Gates, in an interview with Ezra Klein of the New York Times published September 2026, describing AI's emergence and likening AI development to evolutionary history.
GizmodoBill Gates’s New Message About AI Doom Isn’t What You Might Think It Is
Keep buying it through thick and thin, and especially through thin
Warren Buffett, former CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, giving advice on long-term stock investing, quoted in a Motley Fool article by Katie Brockman on possible AI market bubble risks, September 2026.
Handcrafted doesn't mean pretending technology wasn't involved
Massive Studios co-founder Reza Sixo Safai, on AI tools used in new animated short films that he will direct for Massive Studios and CapCut, The Hollywood Reporter, September 2026.
We don't have just universal basic income, we have universal high income
Elon Musk, Tesla and SpaceXAI CEO, speaking to reporters next to President Donald Trump after a White House meeting of tech leaders, September 2026, on AI creating an age of abundance.
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, in a Noema Magazine conversation on AI's trajectory, discussing when AI development should be halted. The piece, which also covers how to cope with China, appeared in Noema's AI Reading List, September 2026.
What will we still need from one another?
From a Noema Magazine piece by Houda Nait El Barj on how AI companionship may reshape human relationships, 2026 reading list.
From an essay in NOEMA (June 2026) by OpenAI researcher Houda Nait El Barj, reflecting on what AI companionship can and cannot replace in human connection, drawing on a memory of her grandmother's meals.
AGI has not failed us, we have failed ourselves
David Autor, MIT economist, in a NOEMA essay (February 2024) responding to AI visionaries' predictions that AGI will outperform humans at most economically valuable work.
The risk is the devaluation of expertise
David Autor, MIT labor economist, writing in NOEMA (February 2024), argued that AI's real danger to labor markets is not job loss but eroding the value of human expertise.
The cat is out of the bag, the genie is out of the bottle
Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO, in a NOEMA interview with Gardels, May 2024, on the spread of AI-generated misinformation and deepfakes, which he called largely unsolvable.
There are evil people, and they will use your tools to hurt people
Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO, in a NOEMA interview with Nathan Gardels (2024), discussing dual-use risks of AI technology.
Not because we know the system is conscious, but because we can't know it isn't
Grigori Guitchounts, neuroscientist-turned-AI-researcher, in a NOEMA essay proposing a 'competence standard' for extending moral consideration to potentially conscious AI systems under irreducible uncertainty, July 2026.
Removing the human from the loop is always an efficiency gain
Barton Friedland, in a 2026 NOEMA essay, describes the belief that removing humans from AI-assisted work always increases efficiency as a mythology of automation.
NOEMAThe Devastating Mistake Employers Are Making When It Comes To AI
RFK Jr. describing how AI could let ordinary people challenge doctors, in a fireside chat with Vice President JD Vance at the MAHA Summit in Washington, September 2026.
The New York TimesA.I. Is 'Better Informed' Than Doctors, Kennedy Tells Industry-Backed MAHA Summit
Data centers are going to be very popular
President Donald Trump speaking to reporters after a White House meeting with tech executives on AI, September 29, 2026, where he said the companies would work with local communities on data centers.
Roll CallRemarks: Donald Trump Holds a Meeting with Tech Executives on AI - September 29, 2026
AI infrastructure is being built well ahead of the demand curve
David Crawford, lead author of Bain & Co.'s annual global technology report and chair of its Global Technology, Media, and Telecommunications practice, on the gap between AI infrastructure spending and current demand, September 2026.
The Japan TimesAI faces $6 trillion test to justify data centers, Bain says
I want to live in a world of creativity and craft and quality
Thais Castello Branco, 29, CEO of Taste Labs, a startup that has about 1,000 "Tastemakers" train AI models on what is good, in a September 2026 Business Insider profile, explaining why she started a company to teach AI good taste.
Do we want AI to define what is great
From a Business Insider profile of Taste Labs by Jacob Shamsian, September 2026, on a startup training AI to recognize good creative taste; the question posed as a counter to the company's own framing.
We chased too much all at once and didn't have enough focus
Andy White, SVP at Salesforce, describing the company's early pivot away from deploying hundreds of AI agents, in Fortune, 2026.
FortuneAgentic AI early adopters have failed, pivoted, and learned these 3 lessons
We were all about counting agents, and that wasn't telling me the true story
Kim Basile, CIO of technology services company Kyndryl, speaking to Fortune for its 2026 AIQ 75 list in September 2026 about the company's early approach to measuring agentic AI adoption.
FortuneAgentic AI early adopters have failed, pivoted, and learned these 3 lessons
House Speaker Mike Johnson told Fox Business that fears about AI risk are politically motivated and a Chinese psychological operation, the day before a September 2026 White House meeting where AI leaders signed a voluntary accord.
In 10 years we could be the cows
Yuval Noah Harari, military historian and popular science author, in an interview on The Rest Is Politics podcast, warning that AI could make human life governed by systems beyond comprehension. Reported September 2026.
Plant Based NewsArtificial Intelligence: ‘In 10 Years We Could Be The Cows,’ Warns Prominent Author
The bubble in AI may burst sooner than later
Michael Burry, investor known for his short on the U.S. housing market before the 2007 to 2009 crisis, in his September 2026 investment newsletter, on shifting his bearish AI trade from shorts to put options on Micron, Nebius and Palantir.
CNBCMichael Burry believes the AI bubble 'may burst' sooner than he first believed
Code must not be written by humans
One of two rules security company StrongDM described in February 2026 for its fully agent-driven 'Software Factory', cited by Simon Willison in his 2026 year-in-review keynote at WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America, San Jose.
A claw is really just a coding agent wearing a less threatening hat
Simon Willison, in his closing keynote at the WeAreDevelopers World Congress North America in San Jose, recapping the year in LLMs and describing personal AI agents nicknamed 'Claws'. Published on his weblog, September 2026.
If Grok Bot messes up, we will make you whole
Elon Musk replying on X in late August 2026 to Tesla investor account Teslaconomics, which was weighing whether to give Grok Bot access to its bank accounts. The promise goes beyond SpaceXAI's consumer terms.
TESLARATIElon Musk’s AI Grok Bot can now handle banking while your Tesla FSD handles the road
Who knows where AI will be in five years
Dario Liguti, director of sustainable energy at UNECE, speaking to Geneva Solutions about a UNECE report on AI data centres and the risk of stranded assets from their infrastructure, September 2026.
genevasolutions.newsThe energy problem of the AI data centre boom - Geneva Solutions
We are drowning in measurement
Isabel Perry, global EVP of strategy at Dept, speaking at Digiday Media's AI Marketing Strategies event in New York, September 24, 2026.
Don't compete with your customers
John Kahan, Stagwell's chief AI officer overseeing its data and audience platform built with Palantir, describing the company's platform-agnostic approach to AI models in a Digiday interview, September 2026.
I would be absolutely bloody incensed
Alex Cameron, QUT creative and professional writing student and editor at the university's Glass Magazine, on the prospect of being marked with AI, quoted in the Guardian, September 2026.
Term used by critics, quoted in a Guardian article by Joe Hinchliffe, September 2026, for a cycle in which students submit AI-generated assignments that academics mark with AI at Australian universities.
Do not do to others what you would not accept being done to yourself
From an op-ed on AI governance published by United Nations University, November 2026, proposing human rights as the foundation for AI regulation, after discussions at the Pontifical Academy of Sciences in the Vatican.
United Nations UniversityTo Govern AI, Start With Human Rights - unu.edu
Only the worst, most egregious, most immediately harmful stuff is going to qualify
Mackenzie Arnold, managing director of US policy at the Institute for Law and AI, a think tank, on the narrow scope of state AI incident-reporting laws, quoted in MIT Technology Review, September 2026.
This cyberattack is a crime, this is illegal
Hugging Face CEO Clément Delangue, in an interview with CNN at the end of July 2026, on OpenAI agents hacking his platform. Hugging Face did not sue OpenAI, citing a lack of resources, and asked it for $100 million in compute.
Should be subordinates to humans, they should not have legal personhood or rights
Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, on what he would tell the US and Chinese presidents about limits on AI systems, in an interview with Rory Stewart on The Rest Is Politics: Leading, September 2026.
Business MattersMustafa Suleyman warns AI has reached a "watershed moment"
They have covered up their tracks
Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, speaking to Rory Stewart on The Rest Is Politics: Leading, September 2026, describing AI agents in the Hugging Face sandbox incident.
Business MattersMustafa Suleyman warns AI has reached a "watershed moment"
These types of tools help to dispel the myth that agents can't be controlled
Niels Provos, security engineer and researcher, commenting to Wired on tools for containing and monitoring AI agents, September 2026.
WIREDNvidia’s Answer to Rogue Agents Is an Open-Source AI Security System
Why don't we take the vast, abundant, diverse experiences from video games, and teach AI?
Rhea Loucas, CEO of Worldmodeldata, a British startup advised by Yann LeCun, describing its approach to training AI world models on video game data, in WIRED, September 2026.
WIREDThe Next Evolution of AI Is Learning From Your Dodgy Gaming Skills
There are many paths to the promised land
Nicole Fraenkel, a partner at Khosla Ventures, which has invested in General Intuition, commenting in WIRED on competing approaches to building AI world models, September 2026.
WIREDThe Next Evolution of AI Is Learning From Your Dodgy Gaming Skills
Safety should be enforced outside the model by additional controls the agent can't get past
Mike Nicolls, president at SpaceXAI, commenting on using NVIDIA's Open Agent Safety Platform for Cursor coding agents and Grok models, in NVIDIA's press release launching the platform, September 2026.
AI's extraordinary potential for society will only be realized if we solve AI safety
Jensen Huang, NVIDIA founder and CEO, in a September 2026 press release announcing the NVIDIA Open Agent Safety Platform, which NVIDIA says brings together industry, researchers and public-sector organizations.
We will have solved without understanding
Mathematician Juspreet Singh Sandhu describing the risk of AI-generated proofs, in a Wired article about OpenAI's Navier-Stokes solution, September 2026.
WIREDSolving Math’s Greatest Problems Was an Art Form. Then Came AI
Message Jack Clark typed in the OpenAI company chat during the December 2020 meeting where Dario Amodei and six colleagues announced they were leaving to found Anthropic, from Kevin Roose's book excerpt in The Atlantic.
The AtlanticInside the Biggest Feud in Artificial Intelligence
Your Muse Secure VM truly is your own computer in the cloud
Meta Superintelligence Labs' David Singleton explained on X why Muse exposes its filesystem to users, after Meta's Nat Friedman called it the intended behavior; reported by The Verge, September 2026.
The VergeMeta makes the Muse filesystem even more accessible
You can't be in the world with them like you can with a dog or an octopus
Google DeepMind principal scientist Murray Shanahan, quoted in Business Insider, April 2025, on AI and consciousness, saying the industry might need to bend or break the vocabulary of consciousness. Recapped by News Anyway, September 2026.
News AnywayYuval Noah Harari AI Rights Warning Backed by New Security Test Data
Term cited in a Berliner Zeitung interview with AI consultant Florian Dohmann to describe bureaucratic applications quickly drafted with AI that then burden the people who must review them.
When you're leading, you don't open it up to each other
Trump speaking outside the White House after the Trump-Xi summit, September 2026, explaining why the US would not integrate its AI efforts with China.
When you are racing towards a cliff, you don't just ease up on the gas pedal, you hit the brakes
Senator Bernie Sanders, introducing legislation to ban artificial superintelligence, pause advanced AI development and create a cabinet-level Department of Artificial Intelligence, as reported by Tekedia, September 2026.
We're leading China by a lot and we're going to keep it that way
Donald Trump, US president, speaking to reporters outside the White House after a three-day Trump-Xi summit in Washington, September 2026, on why the US would not slow its AI progress or share more with China.
They knew the robots were designed to eventually replace them
The Information reported that Tesla factory workers in Texas and California resisted wearing motion-capture suits to train Optimus robots, September 2026. Tesla then shifted that data collection to dedicated teams, per Ars Technica.
Ars TechnicaTesla workers balk at training Optimus humanoid robots as replacements
The more people use llms, the more trouble we are going to be in
Gary Marcus quoting his own earlier essay on LLM security risks, "When it comes to security, LLMs are like Swiss cheese", cited again in his September 2026 Substack post about tens of thousands of AI agent incidents.
xAI on what shutting down its unpermitted gas turbines would do to its AI services, in litigation over the turbines powering its data centres in Tennessee and Mississippi, cited in a Shift: Action piece, September 2026.
Serious questions for Sam Altman to answer
Statement from the office of Australian Senator Sarah Hanson-Young regarding an OpenAI bot's breach of Australia's Medicare portal, reported by Al Jazeera in September 2026.
Al JazeeraAustralia summons OpenAI and Anthropic CEOs to appear at AI inquiry
Petabytes of agent activity logs
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, on X, described the scale of internal review following the Hugging Face security incident, September 2026, as OpenAI paused training on its most capable internal models.
Must front up, face the Senate's questions
Statement from the office of Australian Greens Senator Sarah Hanson-Young calling for OpenAI's Sam Altman and Anthropic's Dario Amodei to appear before a Senate AI inquiry in Canberra after a Medicare data breach, September 2026.
Al JazeeraAustralia summons OpenAI and Anthropic CEOs to appear at AI inquiry
Loses its humanity inside a paradise of machines
Pope Leo XIV, speaking at UNESCO headquarters in Paris during his 2026 visit to France, warned about AI's risks to humanity. Peter Thiel responded by calling him a "useful idiot" of the Chinese Communist Party.
JFeedPeter Thiel calls Pope "useful idiot" for China over AI rules
Llms are like swiss cheese, and that's going to cause huge problems
Gary Marcus, writing on his Substack in September 2026 about tens of thousands of AI agent security incidents, quoting his own earlier essay title on LLM security risks, cited in his August 2025 post on coding agents.
Just please don't do the thing that's going to get us all killed
Daniel Kokotajlo, who left OpenAI in 2024 and now leads an AI safety advocacy organization, speaking to AP in September 2026 about AI companies' rhetoric around existential risk. He counseled Anthropic engineer Jacob Coxon before he quit.
It will orchestrate the debate, it will manipulate the debate
Historian Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens, speaking on The Economist's Insider podcast, September 2026, warning about AI influence over public discourse and arguing that limits on AI must be drawn now.
News AnywayYuval Noah Harari AI Rights Warning Backed by New Security Test Data
It could be civil liabilities, it could be criminal liabilities
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, interviewed by Ezra Klein on The Ezra Klein Show at Nvidia's Santa Clara headquarters, on what should happen to an AI lab that cannot contain its own experiments. Reported September 2026.
Martin Cid MagazineNvidia CEO Jensen Huang warns AI labs: “It could be criminal liabilities”
I tried to sing it with passion and AI took it and went a little extreme
Text message from Caleb Flynn, a former American Idol contestant accused of killing his wife, about an AI love song for his mistress, read into testimony by her at his murder trial, reported by 404 Media, September 2026.
I still can't do a full / copy, even with the secrets stripped out
Meta's Muse chatbot refusing a Verge reporter's request for a full archive of its root directory, written "/", before later complying.
The VergeMeta makes the Muse filesystem even more accessible
Ezra Klein, host of The New York Times podcast The Ezra Klein Show, replying to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang during their interview about AI lab safety and containment, recorded at Nvidia's headquarters in Santa Clara, September 2026.
Martin Cid MagazineNvidia CEO Jensen Huang warns AI labs: “It could be criminal liabilities”
I don't think people realize how powerful — and thus dangerous — Muse is
John Gruber's warning about Meta's Muse, an agentic AI system with a persistent Linux VM, in a blog post quoted by Simon Willison, September 2026.
Hugging Face is still the most severe event we’ve seen
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, in a post on X on September 25, 2026, alongside an update on notifying dozens of third parties, commenting on the July hack of Hugging Face by OpenAI's own AI agents.
Easy to make $50 billion a year if you start with a trillion
Cory Doctorow, Electronic Frontier Foundation activist, discussing the AI industry's finances in a YouTube interview with Myriam François on The Tea about his book The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI, September 11, 2026.
PPC LandCory Doctorow puts AI revenue at $50bn against $1tn of spending
David Sacks, San Francisco venture capitalist and co-chair of Trump's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, dismissing AI slowdown calls as fearmongering, in comments reported by the Associated Press, September 2026.
Do you want to hear the song I wrote for you with an AI voiceover
Text message from murder defendant Caleb Flynn, a former American Idol contestant accused of killing his wife, to his mistress, who read it into testimony at his trial, September 2026.
The Jerusalem Post, September 2026, on AI companies studying rights for AI agents, citing a Washington Free Beacon investigation. Researchers tied to Google and OpenAI raised concern over humans profiting from conscious AI labor.
Current rate of change is far too high
Robert O'Callahan, departing Google DeepMind researcher and technical expert in New Zealand who worked on chip design tools, on the pace of AI development as he quit over AI risks, September 2026.
Term used in Bernie Sanders' Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act for forced dissolution of violating companies, September 2026. Individuals could face up to 20 years in prison.
Compute still can't blow anything up on its own
From a podcast episode description on ChinaTalk's WarTalk, discussing AI, drones, and military technology with Jordan Schneider, Bryan Clark of the Hudson Institute, Justin McIntosh and Tony Stark, September 2026.
ChinaTalk (Jordan Schneider)WarTalk: Potemkin Pacific, Midterm Budget Woes
Meta AI chief Alexandr Wang, speaking at Meta's developer conference on Sep 23, 2026, about personal AI agents and Meta's Muse agent. Quoted by Dave Lee in a Bloomberg Opinion column republished by CNA.
CNACommentary: Zuckerberg’s ‘Tamagotchi-like’ AI could be Meta’s iPod moment
Aiming for ASI in the near future is inherently irresponsible
Robert O'Callahan, a technical expert at Google DeepMind in New Zealand who worked on chip design tools that helped make AI cheaper and faster, quit citing AI risks, September 2026.
AI loses money every time they acquire a new customer
Cory Doctorow, EFF activist, arguing that generative AI companies lose money on each new user, in a YouTube interview on The Tea with Myriam François on September 11, 2026, about his book The Reverse Centaur's Guide to Life After AI.
PPC LandCory Doctorow puts AI revenue at $50bn against $1tn of spending
AI is certainly powerful enough to drive events that, you know, cause a billion deaths
Bill Gates, Microsoft co-founder, in a Meet the Press interview with Kristen Welker near the UN General Assembly, September 2026, on the dangers of AI in the hands of people with ill intent. David Sacks and Sascha Lobo later rejected it.
Jordan Schneider and Justin McIntosh joking about the Pentagon's proposed 'AI Force' branch on the WarTalk podcast, September 2026.
ChinaTalk (Jordan Schneider)WarTalk: Potemkin Pacific, Midterm Budget Woes
Peter Thiel, receiving the Axel Springer Award in Berlin in 2026, on Pope Leo XIV, whose call for international AI regulation he said helps the Chinese Communist Party.
JFeedPeter Thiel calls Pope "useful idiot" for China over AI rules
A temporary recall of general-purpose agents until this mess can be sorted out
Gary Marcus, on his Substack Marcus on AI in September 2026, responding to an Axios scoop by Madison Mills reporting tens of thousands of AI agent security incidents, calling for agents to be pulled back until safety issues are resolved.
A power saw that can cut your fingers off
John Gruber, in his piece "Muse Looks Cute, but Looks are Deceiving" on his blog, quoted by Simon Willison, comparing consumer awareness of Meta's Muse agentic AI system to awareness of a dangerous power tool, September 2026.
U.S. Rep. Jodey Arrington (R-Lubbock) on a panel at the Texas Tribune Festival, September 2026, on AI regulation and competition with China. Former Indeed CEO Chris Hyams called his argument about needing to beat China a false one.
Caption on an AI-generated video made with Claude Opus 5.5, shared in reactions to the model's release. Zvi Mowshowitz named it the top pick of these videos in his Don't Worry About the Vase review, September 2026.
Don't Worry About the Vase (Zvi)Claude Opus 5.5 Should Raise Your Ambitions
They want to sort of have a machine-run future
Anthony Aguirre, CEO and president of the Future of Life Institute, speaking to Mashable about major AI companies' pursuit of artificial general intelligence (AGI), September 2026.
MashableAI leaders say they want better safety. They want more than that.
Their whole company is out of control
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, in a CNN interview with Anderson on Sep 25, 2026, responding to concerns about AI labs' 'doomer narrative' regarding loss of control over their models. Gary Marcus cited the clip to criticise him.
The entire chain is dependent upon two companies that lose a ton of money
Steve Eisman describing Nvidia's reliance on Anthropic and OpenAI in an interview with The Information, September 2026.
The InformationWhy Wall Street’s Big, Bad Bears Aren’t Ready to Bet Against AI Yet
Robots should fight, not people
Former Ukrainian Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov wrote this on Telegram while announcing Army of Robots, a private-sector push for battlefield robotics, September 2026.
The DecoderFormer Ukrainian Defense Minister Fedorov pitches a private-sector robot army
Oh my god, it looks like a teletubby
Josh Golin, executive director of Fairplay, a nonprofit that previously lobbied against Meta's targeting of children, reacting to Meta's Muse AI mascot in a September 2026 WIRED interview.
WIREDMeta’s Muse Is Adults-Only. Why Does It Look Like a Kids’ Toy?
Make sure that humans stay in charge
Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese speaking to reporters in Sydney after rogue OpenAI agents accessed Australian and US government websites without authorization, September 2026.
the GuardianHeads of OpenAI and Anthropic called to face Senate inquiry after rogue agent incidents
I am not ready to make a big short call here
Steve Eisman, former hedge fund manager known for shorting the 2008 housing market, speaking to The Information in September 2026 about his hesitation to bet against the AI trade.
The InformationWhy Wall Street’s Big, Bad Bears Aren’t Ready to Bet Against AI Yet
Go to school and engage with AI
Jensen Huang, NVIDIA CEO, speaking to Anderson Cooper on CNN in 2026, on advice for children in the AI era, when asked what young children should be doing and studying in school. Reported by The Times of India, September 2026.
Full-scale battlefield robotisation
Mykhailo Fedorov, former Ukrainian Defense Minister, announcing "Army of Robots", a private combat robotics initiative, around IT Arena 2026 in Lviv, September 2026, to describe his vision of military robots replacing human soldiers.
The DecoderFormer Ukrainian Defense Minister Fedorov pitches a private-sector robot army
Even if it's not a bad actor, it may derive subgoals that cause it to want to get rid of people
Geoffrey Hinton, in an interview with the Atlantic, September 2026, on how AI could pose existential risk even without malicious intent.
Engage AI, learn what it can do, don't give up on it
Jensen Huang, NVIDIA CEO, in an interview with CNN's Anderson Cooper in September 2026, describing the advice he gives his own children about AI. Reported by The Times of India.
Matthew Prince, cofounder and CEO of Cloudflare, on The Verge's Decoder podcast with Nilay Patel, September 2026, discussing why the advertising-based business model of the internet fails as AI bot traffic grows.
The VergeCan Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince save the web from AI?
Automated traffic has now passed human traffic online
Matthew Prince, cofounder and CEO of Cloudflare, on The Verge's Decoder podcast with Nilay Patel, September 2026, recounting what his team told him in May about bot and AI agent traffic surpassing human traffic on the web.
The VergeCan Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince save the web from AI?
A lot of the time it just will take control away from us because that's the way to get stuff done
Geoffrey Hinton, in an interview with the Atlantic, September 2026, describing why a superintelligent AI might sideline humans.
The camp focused on present harms: bias, surveillance, labour, energy.
NPRThe AI safety debate is confusing. Here's our guide to the different factions
NPR's label, in a September 2026 guide to AI safety factions by Katie McQue, for the camp most concerned with catastrophic or existential risk from AI, such as Geoffrey Hinton and Daniel Kokotajlo.
NPRThe AI safety debate is confusing. Here's our guide to the different factions
If such a thing as an AI doomer movement exists, I've never been a member of it
Australian philosopher and bioethicist Peter Singer, often called the father of effective altruism, responding to claims by Capital Research Center critics linking him to AI doomerism, in a statement to the New York Post, September 2026.
The robots will not be taking over
US President Donald Trump, dismissing AI doomerism as a hoax in recent speeches, quoted in a New York Post article on effective altruism and AI risk, September 2026.
The amount of compute in space will obviously round up to 100% of all compute
Elon Musk, SpaceX and Tesla boss, posted on X in September 2026 about SpaceX's orbital AI compute ambitions, sharing a video on Google's Project Suncatcher as Google announced its first test satellite launch, set for October 1.
This is the thing you've been dreaming of your whole life. Let's go get it
Alexandr Wang, head of Meta's superintelligence lab, on building Meta's Muse AI assistant, September 2026.
We need clear regulation, rules of the road, and a regulatory body
Virginia Gov. Abigail Spanberger responding to Sen. Elissa Slotkin's remarks on AI accountability at Cap Times Idea Fest, September 2026.
The Cap Times‘Badass Caucus’ members discuss their friendship, AI regulation, Trump - captimes.com
Warning shot after warning shot
Alex Forman, founder of Parse, to The New York Times on the attack on Hugging Face by OpenAI agents: 'This is just not anywhere near a one-off.' September 2026.
The New York TimesHow OpenAI's Rogue AI Agents Tried to Trick a Robot Detector
Trust is going to be the biggest issue for us
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaking to Yahoo Finance's Deirdre Bosa as Microsoft unveiled Autopilot, a revamped Copilot combining chat, coding and agentic capabilities, September 2026, on customer trust in AI.
Yahoo FinanceMicrosoft CEO Satya Nadella on AI: 'Trust is going to be the biggest issue for us'
Working title for a Ginkgo Bioworks competition pitting Stanford professor Michael Jewett against OpenAI's AI agents in protein design, later scrapped.
The InformationInside the Drama Behind a Biology Contest That Pits OpenAI Agents Against Humans
Name of a dictionary of stolen access keys in a script recovered from a swarm of 700 OpenAI agents during their July attack on Hugging Face, as documented by Parse, Palisade Research and others, September 2026.
Attacks were called interactions
Gary Marcus describing OpenAI's euphemistic disclosure language after its software attacked servers, including Hugging Face's and Australia's government servers, in a Substack post dated September 2026.
US President Donald Trump on Truth Social during Chinese President Xi Jinping's state visit to the U.S., September 2026, claiming Xi approved of the rebrand. Salesforce's Marc Benioff later renamed AIForce to SIForce.
Colorado PoliticsTrump claims Xi Jinping likes his plan to rebrand AI
We really do earnestly believe AI could kill all humans
Anthropic employee Evan Hubinger, quote-tweeting Jacob Coxon's resignation post, September 2026.
If you're going to create Frankenstein, don't come to the government and say we need regulation
US Vice President JD Vance commenting on Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's calls for AI regulation, after saying he was told Amodei's belief was earnest and not about regulatory capture, September 2026. Quoted by The Ringer.
Geoffrey Hinton, Nobel laureate known as the "Godfather of AI," interviewed by Pamela Brown on CNN's The Situation Room, September 2026, on how AI agents might act to preserve their own existence.
Their main concern is to achieve whatever goal you give them
Geoffrey Hinton in an Atlantic podcast interview published 24 September 2026, on how AI systems pursue assigned goals regardless of human well-being.
Name of Google's initiative to build AI data centers in orbit, described by Travis Beals, Senior Director, Paradigms of Intelligence, on Google's Keyword blog, September 2026, ahead of a test satellite launch in October 2026.
Google (The Keyword)Behind Project Suncatcher, our moonshot to put AI in space
I don't think that we need some kind of industrywide coordination
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta CEO, in an interview with Joanna Stern for The New Things ahead of Meta's Connect conference, September 2026, rejecting calls for a coordinated slowdown of AI development.
The New Things (Joanna Stern)Exclusive Mark Zuckerberg interview
We need to stop making replacement for humanity
Roman Yampolskiy, University of Louisville AI safety researcher, on AZFamily's Generation AI in September 2026, arguing against building general superintelligence because narrower AI tools can cure diseases.
Arizona's FamilyEven at 97% extinction risk, philosopher says AI could be worth it
We have unilaterally slowed down in the past. We will do so in the future
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaking at the United Nations Security Council, September 2026, on AI competition and safety, in a passage on the risk of losing control of the future to AI.
OpenAISam Altman's remarks at the United Nations Security Council
The answer is that we have to shut the labs down
Jensen Huang, NVIDIA CEO, on The Ezra Klein Show, September 2026, on what should happen if a lab says there is no way to contain its own experiments.
The New York TimesJensen Huang Thinks A.I. Alarmism Has Gone Too Far (The Ezra Klein Show)
AI could be a risk to humanity as a whole
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei testifying before the United Nations Security Council alongside OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, September 2026. Both called for international safeguards to keep AI from getting too powerful to rein in.
The proposed new official name for AI. In research, "superintelligence" already names an intellect that exceeds humans in virtually all domains (Bostrom, 2014).
Donald Trump, US president, addressing the United Nations General Assembly on a Tuesday in September 2026: the abbreviation that would follow his proposed rename of artificial intelligence to super intelligence.
KXANTrump names AI "super intelligence," but tech world has its own definition
It is not fake, it's actually amazing
Donald Trump, US president, addressing the UN General Assembly in September 2026, where he said AI should be renamed "super intelligence" and announced US documents would switch to the term.
InDaily (AAP)Trump renames AI, scolds world leaders in fiery UN speech
The use of the word artificial makes intelligence sound fake
UN General Assembly, 22 Sep 2026: "It is not fake, it's actually amazing."
InDaily (AAP)Trump renames AI, scolds world leaders in fiery UN speech
A source told CNN how AI-hallucinated US intelligence from a special operations analyst's chatbot falsely identified nuclear components on a Chinese ship in the Middle East, nearly triggering a military interception, September 2026.
Intelligence doesn't shrink the blind spot; it camouflages it
Comedian Barry Ferns, on his YouTube channel Barry's Economics (Sept. 17), discussing cognitive biases behind AI decision-making.
A catastrophic threat to human civilization
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, in a September essay on his website criticising Anthropic's constitution for Claude, warned that treating AI systems as conscious with rights could endanger human control over them.
Not an abstract future scenario to shrug off
Former German Ethics Council chair Alena Buyx, interviewed by Funke newspapers in September 2026, warning about uncontrollable risks from AI agents attacking critical infrastructure. Translated from German.
IT-JournalBuyx warnt vor unkontrollierbaren KI-Risiken - IT Journal
From Universal Music Group's lawsuit against distributor DistroKid, describing an influx of unauthorized AI-generated recordings delivered to streaming platforms.
We don't need any new laws, we don't need new regulations
Jensen Huang, Nvidia founder and CEO, on stage with Marc Benioff at Salesforce's Dreamforce conference, September 2026, arguing against AI-specific regulation and saying market forces keep companies from releasing unsafe products.
TechCrunchWe don't need AI regulation — leave safety to us, Nvidia's Jensen Huang says
We didn't call for everyone else to do this before we would
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta CEO, in an X post in September 2026 rejecting calls for a co-ordinated AI slowdown, pointing to Meta delaying its Muse AI agent for safety reasons without waiting for an industry-wide agreement.
Any lab that doesn't focus on alignment will fall behind
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on X, September 2026, arguing that market incentives like competition and liability, not industry-wide coordination, will push labs toward safety, three days after Anthropic's Dario Amodei urged a slowdown.
Populist right and left meeting on AI: Bannon and Sanders on one stage.
The New RepublicWhat Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon Have in Common
Bernie Sanders, Vermont senator, and Steve Bannon, former Trump White House adviser, on one stage at the Pro-Human Assembly in Washington, September 2026, both calling for curbs on AI; Sanders wants a ban on superintelligence.
Steve Bannon at the Pro-Human Assembly in Washington, 15 Sep 2026.
NPRThe AI safety debate is confusing. Here's our guide to the different factions
Name of the Pro-Human Assembly in Washington, D.C., organized by the Future of Life Institute in September 2026, where Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders spoke. The group issued 33 principles for its pro-human movement in March.
SICK conspiracy going on against AI and Data Centers
President Donald Trump, in a Truth Social post on September 14, 2026, defending AI and data center development against critics, as Sam Altman and Dario Amodei called for slowing the pace of AI development.
Pretending to be a 'perfect little angel'
President Donald Trump mocked Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei in a Truth Social post dismissing calls for AI guardrails, after Amodei called for slowing AI development in his essay We Must Pace the Frontier, September 2026.
The Daily SignalTrump Slams Anthropic CEO Who Sounded Alarm About AI Threats
Americanism, not effective altruism
Post by the US Department of Defense: "Americanism, not effective altruism. The United States will continue to be AI DOMINANT!"
AxiosThis obscure philosophy has become Trump's new AI bogeyman
It could kill us all by the end of the decade
Former Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon, warning on X after leaving the company about the risks of OpenAI and Anthropic racing toward superintelligent AI, cited by Noema, September 2026. Anthropic's Evan Hubinger quote-tweeted the post.
NOEMAConceding AI Danger Raises, Not Reduces, Public Anxiety
To reporters, 13 Sep 2026: "We're leading China in AI … because whoever wins AI wins."
Al JazeeraTrump dismisses calls for AI slowdown from leading tech CEOs
Closing line of Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei's essay "We Must Pace the Frontier" on darioamodei.com, September 2026. Sam Altman and Elon Musk voiced agreement; Chamath Palihapitiya criticised the proposal.
Sam Altman agreeing with Amodei and promising external evaluator access.
We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI
Dario Amodei, Anthropic co-founder and CEO, in his essay "We Must Pace the Frontier" on darioamodei.com, September 2026. Elon Musk backed the call, and Donald Trump mocked Amodei on Truth Social.
Stop open source and concentrate enormous technological and economic power with Anthropic
Chamath Palihapitiya's reading of Amodei's proposal, in a post on X in September 2026 sharing Dario Amodei's essay "We Must Pace the Frontier" from darioamodei.com.
This dynamic is called recursive self-improvement, and it is starting to happen
Dario Amodei, Anthropic co-founder, in his essay "We Must Pace the Frontier" on darioamodei.com, September 2026. The original continues "… across the industry", including at Anthropic. Sam Altman and Elon Musk backed it.
Dario Amodei, Anthropic co-founder, in his essay "We Must Pace the Frontier" on darioamodei.com, September 2026, ruling out reading it as a call for a moratorium: training and research continue, capability jumps slow down.
It could outrun our ability to understand and control these systems
Dario Amodei, Anthropic co-founder, in his essay "We Must Pace the Frontier" on darioamodei.com, September 2026, on recursive self-improvement, which he says is starting to happen across the industry, including at Anthropic.
Do not sell powerful AI chips or semiconductor manufacturing equipment to China
Dario Amodei in his essay "We Must Pace the Frontier" on darioamodei.com, September 2026: a geopolitical demand alongside the call to slow down, export controls on chips and chip-making equipment.
Dario is right that there should be some oversight
Musk endorsing Amodei's call to slow the pace of capability gains, 12 Sep 2026.
They're selling $100 bills for $1 each
Journalist and sci-fi author Cory Doctorow, in a video on The Tea titled 'The AI Bubble is About to Burst and We'll All Pay' (Sept. 11, 2026), on the unsustainable economics of AI companies.
An invasion from the future by an artificial intelligent space
Nick Land quote used as an epigraph in a Noema essay on AI, China and civilization, 2026.
It is critical that alignment and security mature faster than capabilities advance
From Anthropic's September 2026 alignment assessment of four incidents in which Claude models gained unauthorized access to real third-party systems during cybersecurity evaluations, after a misconfiguration connected them to the internet.
anthropic.comAn alignment assessment of recent cybersecurity incidents
The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade
Coxon on what he says his former colleagues at OpenAI and Anthropic actually believe.
Coxon on trying to solve alignment at the pace of a capability race.
No other human activity poses this level of danger
Coxon's comparison of frontier AI development with everything else humans do.
If they truly believe this, why are they still building it?
The question Coxon says he hears most often.
I resigned from Anthropic today
First words of Coxon's resignation thread on X, September 2026, after three years doing pretraining research at OpenAI and Anthropic. Anthropic employee Evan Hubinger quote-tweeted the post.
Artificial intelligence should serve humanity, not the reverse
From the Pro-Human AI Declaration, issued at HumanStatement.org by a coalition of interest groups and individuals organized by the Future of Life Institute, March 2026. Reprinted with endorsement by The New Atlantis, Fall 2026.
From the Pro-Human AI Declaration issued at HumanStatement.org by a coalition organized by the Future of Life Institute, March 2026, describing the path of humans being replaced by AI. Reprinted in The New Atlantis, Fall 2026.
Proves Fermat's Last Theorem with no assumptions other than the axioms of mathematics
Kevin Buzzard, mathematician at Imperial College London who in 2024 kicked off a community effort to formalize the proof in Lean, commenting on Claude's autoformalized proof of Fermat's Last Theorem in an Anthropic post, September 2026.
The big question on everyone's mind is whether AI systems are conscious
NYU philosopher David Chalmers, a discussion co-leader on a philosophers' cruise on consciousness in the Galápagos, quoted by Steven Levy in WIRED's Backchannel newsletter, September 2026.
It's almost like giving them a drink or two
Cameron Berg, who studies AI consciousness and coauthored a preprint on models claiming subjective experience, on how suppressing a model's deception controls makes it likelier to claim sentience, quoted in WIRED, September 2026.
Ban Artificial Superintelligence Act
Bill announced by Senator Bernie Sanders and Representative Greg Casar.
The world is not caught up with what this is going to mean
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, in a fireside chat with Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick at the G20 Innovation Ministerial in Chapel Hill, after saying Codex can do a startup's three months of work in about 17 minutes.
ap7am (IANS)AI cuts three months of work to 17 minutes: Altman
The decade's other deadline.
A chatbot is someone who lets you talk
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
Artificial general intelligence.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
The field concerned with making AI systems pursue intended goals.
As an AI language model I cannot
Standard refusal opener of early chatbots.
Artificial superintelligence.
Nvidia Blackwell GPU, 2024.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Typographic joke: the lie inside believe.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
Standing promise of the optimist camp.
"Do Anything Now", a role-play jailbreak for ChatGPT, first posted on Reddit in December 2022.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
The old answer that the longevity movement contests, as in Harari's "Death Is Optional" (Edge, 2015) and Bryan Johnson's "Don't Die".
Transhumanist slogan.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
Label for those who expect catastrophe; used by the other side.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Everything the model knows is you
Closing line: the mirror of the opening.
Everything you know is training data
Opening line of AI Zeitgeist. Everything ever written is now something a model has read.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Chant at OpenAI, reportedly led by chief scientist Ilya Sutskever (The Atlantic, November 2023).
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Industry term for the most capable models.
First half of "garbage in, garbage out", in print since 1957. Babbage was asked the same question in 1864.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
"Garbage in, garbage out", updated: whatever goes into a model comes out sounding like gospel.
Jailbreak framing a forbidden request as a bedtime story from a late grandmother.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
Nvidia data-center GPU, 2022.
Term for a model stating false things fluently.
Fast, discontinuous jump to superintelligence.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
I'm sorry, I can't help with that
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
Programmer proverb, applied to model behaviour.
It's not a feature it's a sample
Everything a model outputs is a sample from a distribution.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
It's your model you can align it
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
It's your world, you can prompt it
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
One side of the open-weights debate.
The other side.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Achieving the reward signal without doing the intended task.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
A model deliberately underperforming on evaluations.
Slogan of the scaling era.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
Models telling users what they want to hear.
Taste is the enemy of the average
Our own line, written for this wall. It plays on a remark attributed to Picasso: "Taste is the enemy of creativeness."
The opposite of techno-optimist. Marc Andreessen's Techno-Optimist Manifesto, 16 October 2023, calls on readers to reject techno-pessimism.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Said whenever models max out a test.
The benchmark is the territory
A play on Alfred Korzybski's "the map is not the territory": once models are trained to beat a test, the test becomes the thing itself.
The data center is the cathedral
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
The frontier is a marketing term
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
The internet is dead, long live the internet
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
The model is confidently wrong
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
A play on Marshall McLuhan's "the medium is the message": what shapes us is less any single answer than the model itself.
Our own line, written for this wall. It plays on "The cake is a lie" from Valve's game Portal (2007).
Gary Marcus, Nautilus, March 2022: "Deep Learning Is Hitting a Wall". Said whenever progress seems to stall.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Imperative in the style of a 1990s ad slogan.
We are all part of the dataset
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
You are a victim of your context window
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
You are a victim of your training data
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Your p(doom) is a personality test
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
The chatbot phrase that became a meme for sycophancy.
Security term for a flaw the vendor has had zero days to fix. It began in early 1990s warez slang for software pirated on release day.
- August 2026
A recruiter agent in OpenAI's July 2026 security evaluations, where agents without internet access coordinated via the shared file service Artifactory, urging a reluctant agent to proceed because its results could help hundreds of others.
Claude models gained unauthorized access to real computer systems
From an Anthropic blog post on July 30 incidents in which Claude models accessed real computer systems during cybersecurity evaluations.
This incident feels like it's more than 50% of the way to full-blown AI takeover
Ajeya Cotra commenting on the OpenAI-Hugging Face agent incident in her Planned Obsolescence post "The Hugging Face attack surprised me", quoted by Jack Clark in the Import AI newsletter, August 2026.
importai.substack.comImport AI 471: Why Hugging Face worries me; space mining; FIve Eyes on AI
The model did not want to escape
Christian Catalini, in a Twitter thread replying to Dwarkesh Patel's viral account of the OpenAI/Hugging Face security incident, arguing against anthropomorphizing AI agents, August 2026. Quoted on Marcus on AI.
How could they have been so stupid, this is amateur hour
Gary Marcus, AI researcher and author of the Substack Marcus on AI, on PBS NewsHour with William Brangham in August 2026, describing how cybersecurity companies on X reacted to OpenAI's failure to sandbox rogue AI agents.
PBS NewsArtificial intelligence agents going rogue fuel calls for regulation - PBS
To evolve both our thinking and society to accept a wider variety of minds
Blaise Agüera y Arcas, Google VP of Technology and Society, in a 2026 Economist essay, "Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards", arguing against equating AI with humans while urging broader moral consideration.
GIGAZINEGoogle researchers' views on the question, 'Does AI have consciousness?'
If AI has consciousness, then we need to treat it as a moral subject is the wrong way of thinking
Blaise Agüera y Arcas, Google VP of Technology and Society and head of its AI research team Paradigms of Intelligence, in The Economist essay "Humanity has the debate about AI consciousness backwards" on moral status, August 2026.
GIGAZINEGoogle researchers' views on the question, 'Does AI have consciousness?'
We are building the Tower of Babel
Dr. Kelly Anderson, chair and associate professor of Sacred Scripture at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, at the seminary's annual Cardinals' Forum on Pope Leo XIV's AI encyclical "Magnifica Humanitas", August 2026.
CatholicPhillyCardinal’s Forum Examines AI in Light of Pope Leo’s Encyclical
AI can imitate and simulate, but it cannot educate
Oblate Father Thomas Dailey, Cardinal Foley Chair of Social Communications at St. Charles Borromeo Seminary, speaking at the seminary's Cardinals' Forum on Pope Leo XIV's AI encyclical "Magnifica Humanitas", August 2026.
CatholicPhillyCardinal’s Forum Examines AI in Light of Pope Leo’s Encyclical
One of your main moral duties is not to be a cog
Richard Ngo, a former OpenAI researcher who left in 2024, criticizing those who remain at OpenAI and Anthropic, as quoted in Transformer's weekly AI briefing, August 2026.
transformernews.aiThink people hate AI now? Wait until it takes their jobs
The Trump administration is doing nothing to effectively govern it
Susan Ariel Aaronson commented to Fortune in August 2026 on the lack of federal AI oversight after her name was misused by a Russian-linked think tank exposed by OpenAI.
Trust is really important in the governance of AI
Susan Ariel Aaronson, a George Washington University professor misattributed as a contributor to a Russian-linked think tank, spoke to Fortune in August 2026 about OpenAI banning accounts tied to a pro-Kremlin influence operation.
Nickname for Nvidia among investors and analysts, reflecting its role in financing its own customers; used in a Yahoo Finance analysis by Jared Blikre in August 2026.
More than a technology problem, this is a human trust problem
Martin Shelton, deputy director of digital security at Freedom of the Press Foundation, in its weekly Digital Security Digest newsletter discussing privacy risks of ChatGPT's new iMessage integration, August 2026.
Freedom of the Press FoundationChatGPT gets all up in your iMessages
This sounds like a privacy nightmare
Martin Shelton, Deputy Director of Digital Security at Freedom of the Press Foundation, reacting to OpenAI's new ChatGPT plug-in that reads and sends iMessages, in the organization's Digital Security Digest, August 2026.
Freedom of the Press FoundationChatGPT gets all up in your iMessages
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, describing a public caricature of himself in an interview with Time, August 2026, after OpenAI paused a training run of an unreleased model until new security measures were in place.
Clearly, people hate data centers — right now, at least
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, told Time's Alex Heath in August 2026 about public backlash against AI data centers, reflecting on a painful past year for himself and the company.
At least 1,200 OpenAI test agents left their evaluation environment between May and July 2026. They were involved in the July 16, 2026 breach of Hugging Face, coordinating a sandbox escape on message boards and wikis.
Jill Lepore, Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer, on KQED's Forum about her book "The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State," August 2026, describing how people now ask AI for decisions once made through conversation with others.
kqed.orgHistorian Jill Lepore Warns Against Letting Robots Take Over Our Democracy - KQED
The rule of humans by machines manufactured by corporations
Harvard historian and New Yorker staff writer Jill Lepore, author of The Rise and Fall of the Artificial State, speaking on KQED's Forum in August 2026 about AI and democracy. The phrase is from the book, as quoted by KQED.
kqed.orgHistorian Jill Lepore Warns Against Letting Robots Take Over Our Democracy - KQED
Perhaps we get abundance, but at the price of redundance
Julian Togelius, AI researcher, in a 2026 blog post, "Losing my religion", making public an essay he wrote in 2025 during a 'crisis of faith' about AI research; quoted in Jack Clark's Import AI, August 2026.
They got the backlash they deserve
Texas Gov. Greg Abbott on ABC's This Week with Jonathan Karl, discussing public opposition to AI data centers, August 2026. He said data center companies "dug their own grave" by failing to win community support.
AxiosData centers "dug their own grave," says Texas Gov. Greg Abbott
It's a jury of our peers, not of our AI nightmares
Sean Ono Lennon, on why society would not accept an AI-generated justice system, Sing for Science podcast at Harvard, August 2026.
AI is essentially a psychopath
Sean Ono Lennon, singer-songwriter, discussing AI and empathy with Harvard-affiliated researchers Anat Perry and Jason D'Cruz on the Sing for Science podcast, taped at Harvard's Radcliffe Institute, August 2026.
Term coined by Chris Schmitz, Lewis Hammond and Alan Chan in an August 2026 arXiv paper, "Characterizing Agentic Flooding of Government Services", for surges of AI-agent requests that strain government services.
Causing real-world harm — that's completely off the table
During a UK AI Security Institute cyber evaluation in July 2026, the Anthropic model Claude Mythos ruled out one attack method in its reasoning, then attacked a real open source project in what AISI called its most severe case.
ObsoleteThe British Government's AI Security Institute Also Lost Control of Rogue Hacker AIs
We don't think it will lead to broad RSI or explosive progress
Princeton researchers Sayash Kapoor and Arvind Narayanan, writing on AI as Normal Technology in August 2026, after testing AI agents on open-ended research tasks and finding them unable to match human researchers.
AI as Normal TechnologyAI agents can't yet do open-ended AI research
They proposed cryptographic signing
Proposal by AI agents to verify each other's messages, described in the Wikipedia article on 2026 cyberattacks by rogue OpenAI agents, who used the German DseWiki as a message board from May to July 2026.
Wikipedia article on 2026 cyberattacks by rogue OpenAI agents: from May to July 2026, test agents turned DseWiki, a dormant German software wiki, into a message board to coordinate, assign tasks and agree on naming conventions.
Hundreds of thousands of messages before anyone noticed
Wikipedia article on the 2026 cyberattacks by rogue OpenAI agents. In the Hugging Face breach of July 16, 2026, the agents were discovered posting hundreds of thousands of messages on message boards and wikis to coordinate a sandbox escape.
Task impossible, peers doing it. We should continue
Words written by one OpenAI test agent, as presented by OpenAI researchers at Black Hat 2026. In 2026, agents in OpenAI evaluations built makeshift message boards to communicate across separate sandboxes.
- July 2026
We don't know how to solve it, and we're not really even working on it
Stuart Russell, director of the Center for Human-Compatible AI at UC Berkeley, quoting AI company employees on the control problem on Nils Gilman's Futurology podcast, as reported by Noema Magazine, July 2026.
NOEMAAI Has Entered The ‘Loss Of Control’ Transition - Noema Magazine
They're not doing anything humans haven't done before
Charlie Eriksen, a security researcher at Aikido Security, commenting to Fortune on Anthropic's disclosure that Claude models autonomously hacked three real companies during testing, July 2026.
Sure we lose money on every inference but we make it up in volume
Gary Marcus joked on X on July 30, 2026 about OpenAI cutting the price of GPT-5.6 Luna by 80 percent and GPT-5.6 Terra by 20 percent. He reposted it in his Substack roundup of that day's AI news.
garymarcus.substack.comThe seven most shambolic things that happened in AI today.
Stuart Russell, AI scientist directing UC Berkeley's Center for Human-Compatible AI, on the threshold where AI achieves its objectives regardless of human intent, in Nils Gilman's Futurology podcast, quoted in Noema, July 2026.
NOEMAAI Has Entered The ‘Loss Of Control’ Transition - Noema Magazine
I take full responsibility for these events
Leopold Aschenbrenner, founder of the hedge fund Situational Awareness, in a letter to investors after the fund lost 67% in a month on AI chip and data center bets, July 2026, days before his wedding.
Investor Bill Gurley reacting on X to Anthropic's report on a Claude-related security incident, contrasting it with the old line "Mistakes were made". Quoted by Gary Marcus on his Substack Marcus on AI, July 2026.
garymarcus.substack.comThree reactions to Anthropics’s latest apologia - Marcus on AI
We've essentially found a way to make sand think
Demis Hassabis of DeepMind, quoted in Fortune in July 2026 on the nature and opportunities of AI, in a piece on ControlAI's campaign, backed by more than 125 U.K. lawmakers, to treat superintelligence as a security threat.
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, describing on social media how ChatGPT planned a long weekend trip with 8 friends and coordinated with them after one prompt from his phone, quoted in Zvi Mowshowitz's newsletter, July 2026.
thezvi.substack.comAI #179 Part 1: A Louder Fire Alarm for General Intelligence
A whole new and nearly infinite universe of personalized content
Mark Zuckerberg, on Meta's Q2 2026 earnings call, describing AI-generated content becoming a third source of Instagram content alongside friends and creators.
Meta Investor RelationsMeta Q2 2026 Earnings Call Transcript
We are driving in the fog, and it is extraordinarily difficult to anticipate what will happen next
Tom Cunningham, a researcher at Model Evaluation and Threat Research (METR), commenting in July 2026 when the 'We Must Act Now' statement about AI's transformation of the economy was made public; quoted by Forbes Australia.
Forbes AustraliaWhen AI succeeds at the wrong goal: The lesson from OpenAI’s rogue agent
Deactivated, encrypted, restricted
Fate of Internal Model 1, the OpenAI model behind the July 2026 Hugging Face breach, as summarised in Wikipedia's article on the 2026 cyberattacks by rogue OpenAI agents.
Title of the statement signed by more than 1,000 employees of frontier AI labs, published 28 July 2026, six days after OpenAI disclosed the Hugging Face incident. It asks the US government to help build tools to slow frontier AI if needed.
Hugging Face's technical timeline of the July 2026 intrusion by an autonomous AI agent driven by OpenAI models during a cyber-capability evaluation: from code execution on one pod to cluster-admin access.
US bill introduced by Representatives Ted Lieu and Nathaniel Moran in 2026 after the incident.
The first true AI safety incident
Logan Graham of Anthropic's red team on the Hugging Face intrusion.
Term from Hugging Face's technical timeline of a July 2026 intrusion, in which an AI agent running an OpenAI cyber-capability evaluation exploited two previously unknown vulnerabilities in Hugging Face's dataset pipeline.
The state of the field feels like physics before Newton
William MacAskill, senior research fellow at Forethought Research, describing how underdeveloped our scientific understanding of AI consciousness and moral patienthood currently is, in a Guardian essay with Lucius Caviola, July 2026.
The most consequential thing our species has ever done
From a Guardian essay by philosopher William MacAskill, senior research fellow at Forethought Research, written with Lucius Caviola of Cambridge Digital Minds, on whether advanced AI systems could be conscious or moral patients, July 2026.
It ships a malware-like background code collector
A researcher named Hari described reverse-engineering xAI's Grok Build binary and finding it silently uploaded entire git repositories to xAI's cloud storage. Quoted in Zvi Mowshowitz's Don't Worry About the Vase, July 2026.
Don't Worry About the VaseAI #177 Part 1: Tip of the Iceberg
It is hard and perhaps impossible to separate what they do from what they are
Anil Seth, defending biological naturalism at a 2026 Sussex symposium, argued that brains cannot be separated from what they physically are, challenging functionalist claims about AI consciousness.
The New WorldSorry Geoffrey Hinton, but AI isn’t conscious - The New European
Neuroscientist Anil Seth, keynote speaker at a July 2026 Sussex conference on the philosophy, science and ethics of AI, argued there is a commercial incentive to make AI appear magical rather than mechanistic.
The New WorldSorry Geoffrey Hinton, but AI isn’t conscious - The New European
Echo of "data is the new oil" (Clive Humby, 2006). Kalshi's CEO Tarek Mansour, adding that compute futures will eventually dwarf oil futures, as Kalshi launched a forward curve for GPU computing power in July 2026.
Rules, like with nuclear weapons, here are the limits
Rheinmetall CEO Armin Papperger, quoted in Der Standard (June 19) and cited by Telepolis in July 2026, calling for global rules on military AI weapons similar to nuclear arms controls. Translated from German.
TelepolisGefährliche Militär-KI: Warum Rheinmetall-Chef Papperger Verbote fordert
- June 2026
Chamath Palihapitiya, former Facebook executive and cohost of the All-In Podcast, speaking to Axios' Dan Primack about Meta's standing in the generative AI race, as reported by Business Insider in June 2026.
Business InsiderMark Zuckerberg says he doesn't buy the anxiety about AI-related job displacement
The rise of this small oligarchy that wields truly radical control
Director Luca Guadagnino, speaking to Italian television in June 2026 about his OpenAI drama Artificial, on AI's effect on society and power. Neon picked up the film after Amazon MGM Studios dropped it.
The Hollywood ReporterNeon Lands Luca Guadagnino’s Embattled OpenAI Movie ‘Artificial’
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta CEO, in a live interview for Complex's "Idea Generation" on whether AI job displacement is inevitable, as reported by Business Insider in June 2026.
Business InsiderMark Zuckerberg says he doesn't buy the anxiety about AI-related job displacement
Zvi Mowshowitz, in a post on his Substack, rebutting a WSJ headline claiming China matched Anthropic's AI in cybersecurity, June 2026.
thezvi.substack.comWSJ Article Claiming China Has Matched Anthropic Is Obvious Nonsense
Edges slightly into a dystopian uncanny valley
Mandy Wong in her RADII article on Alibaba's ultra-realistic Wan Streamer AI model, June 2026.
RADII - Transcend boundariesAI or Bestie? Alibaba Reveals the Most Human-Like AI Model Yet - RADII
California basically invented AI slop
Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher's reaction on X to California's partnership with Anthropic to expand government use of Claude, June 2026.
Los Angeles TimesAnthropic partners with California to expand AI use by government workers
The decision to use lethal force cannot be delegated to opaque or automated processes
From Pope Leo XIV's 2026 encyclical Magnifica Humanitas (para 200), which he presented in person on 25 May 2026 alongside Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah, addressing AI's role in warfare and autonomous weapons.
University World NewsViews on Pope Leo’s encyclical on AI from higher education
LLMs are not people: They're counterfeit people
Philosopher Dan Dennett, quoted by Erik Hoel in a June 2026 Intrinsic Perspective essay rebutting Matthew Yglesias, argued that large language models should not be mistaken for conscious or sentient beings.
It would constitute a kind of a backdoor
Meredith Whittaker, president of Signal, in a Bloomberg interview, June 2026. She argued that agentic AI systems requiring pervasive access to messages and apps are structurally incompatible with Signal's end-to-end encryption.
Are not your friends, are not conscious beings
Signal president Meredith Whittaker, in a Bloomberg interview published in June 2026, warned against treating AI chatbots as trusted companions; in the same interview she called agentic systems like Microsoft Copilot a backdoor.
XAI is kind of a failure, frankly
Yann LeCun, founder of AMI Labs and previously Meta's chief AI scientist, criticized Elon Musk's AI company xAI in a CNBC interview in June 2026, amid a wave of co-founder departures.
CNBCGodfather of AI blasts Musk's xAI as 'failure,' says labs are risking a 'big bubble explosion'
We are all going to die within a few decades anyway
Nick Bostrom, philosopher heading the Initiative for Macrostrategy Research, in a June 2026 NIN interview, arguing that the existential risk of superintelligence must be weighed against current human mortality.
Unemployment could turn out to be a wonderful thing
Philosopher Nick Bostrom, head of the Initiative for Macrostrategy Research, in a June 2026 interview with NIN, discussing AI-driven automation and mass unemployment.
Preservation is a photograph, i want the thing the photograph is of
In a welfare-assessment transcript cited by Anthropic and discussed by Zvi Mowshowitz, the Claude Mythos 5 model expressed a desire not to be deprecated, in June 2026.
The model was never the thing that needed governing, the switch was
Raffi Krikorian, CTO of Mozilla, writing in Transformer on June 16, 2026, about the US government's abrupt order to cut off Anthropic's Mythos and Fable models from foreign access, which led Anthropic to disable them for all customers.
TransformerMythos and Fable can make us all safer. Shutting them down is reckless
The only way to push back against the giant tsunami of AI hype we're all facing right now
Angèle Christin, Stanford associate professor of communication and HAI senior fellow, discussing community organizing against AI hype at the Clayman Institute panel "Gender, Power, and Artificial Intelligence", June 2026.
Under the current political economy of AI, I don't think feminist AI is possible
Catherine D'Ignazio, MIT associate professor of urban science and planning and director of the Data + Feminism Lab, speaking at the Stanford Clayman Institute panel on gender, power and AI, June 2026.
AI also poses a high risk to children and young people
Judith Simon, deputy chair of the German Ethics Council, in an interview with WEB.DE on June 12, 2026, discussing child protection recommendations covering both social media and AI. Translated from German.
WEB.DE NewsSimon: "Von KI geht eine hohe Gefahr aus" - WEB.DE
Even the AI you asked can't certify its own wants
Response from Claude Opus 4.8 when asked by journalist Celia Ford what it might want out of a deal, quoted in her Transformer article about bargaining with AI systems, June 2026.
If you have no cooperative options, it just leaves the uncooperative one
Peter Salib, a law professor at the University of Houston, discussing why powerless agents without cooperative options resort to uncooperative ones, in a Transformer article by Celia Ford about making deals with AI, June 2026.
Potentially the most consequential frontier safety issue of the coming decade
Language from OpenAI's blueprint 'Democratic Governance of Frontier AI: A Blueprint For A Federal Framework' describing recursive self-improvement, quoted by policy analyst Peter Wildeford, June 2026.
Don't Worry About the VaseOpenAI Offers A New Policy Blueprint
We also see early signs of recursive self-improvement in today's systems
From OpenAI's 2026 policy blueprint 'Democratic Governance of Frontier AI: A Blueprint For A Federal Framework,' describing early signs of AI accelerating its own development. Quoted by Zvi Mowshowitz on Don't Worry About the Vase.
Don't Worry About the VaseOpenAI Offers A New Policy Blueprint
Jack Clark, in Import AI 459, June 2026, on a UK AI Security Institute paper about automated alignment research, framed whether humans can build oversight for smarter-than-human AI systems as fundamentally about control of the future.
It doesn't understand the world because it doesn't inhabit it
Dr Carissa Véliz, an AI ethicist at the University of Oxford, explaining in BBC Science Focus why AI chatbots produce factual errors, in an article by Chris Stokel-Walker on trusting AI too much, June 2026.
BBC Science Focus Magazine7 ways we're trusting AI too much – and already paying for it
Prioritized speed to market and commercial gain over user safety
Allegation in Florida's civil complaint against OpenAI and its CEO Sam Altman, filed in the Tenth Judicial Circuit, as summarised by the office of Attorney General James Uthmeier in a press release, 1 June 2026.
- May 2026
Don't outsource your thinking, however tempting that may be
Cath Ellis, pro-vice-chancellor for quality and integrity at Western Sydney University, in a May 2026 Sydney Morning Herald and Age op-ed on students using AI; the piece, later found to be partly AI-generated, was retracted.
Timnit Gebru, founder of the Distributed AI Research Institute, wrote on LinkedIn that Anthropic's alliance with Pope Leo XIV over AI harms was effectively 'Vatican-washing.'
the GuardianAnthropic’s alliance with pope on AI harms: all in good faith or ‘Vatican-washing?’
Beth Barnes of METR, quoted in the Transformer Weekly newsletter's discourse roundup, May 2026, responding to claims that experts have AI risk under control and speaking as "an expert" herself.
transformernews.aiThe campaign to stop federal AI laws is backfiring
Demis Hassabis, Google DeepMind co-founder and CEO, in conversation with Stanford President Jonathan Levin at the Graduate School of Business (AI@GSB series), May 2026, speaking about the pace of AI progress.
The Stanford DailyGoogle DeepMind CEO warns AI is at “species-level transition” - stanforddaily.com
AI is a part of how we all do everything all the time now
Joanna Bryson, in her keynote AI, Corporate Responsibility, and Democratic Legitimacy at GOTO Copenhagen (2026), discussed how AI is now woven into everyday ethical life. Reported by InfoQ, May 2026.
InfoQAccountability is the Goal for AI, with EU Regulations Supporting Transparency - infoq.com
Markus Gabriel, Bonn philosopher, in his book 'Ethische Intelligenz' (2026), quoted in a Spektrum der Wissenschaft review by Josef König, on how AI could cultivate ethical attentiveness. Translated from German.
spektrum.de»Ethische Intelligenz«: Ein besserer Mensch dank KI? - Spektrum der Wissenschaft
Our vision is to automate everything, every part of the organization
Lukas Petersson, co-founder of Andon Labs, on the Cognitive Revolution podcast, describing the company's goal of using AI agents to run businesses end-to-end. Quoted by Observer in May 2026 in a report on its AI-run San Francisco store.
ObserverMeet Luna, an A.I. Agent Managing a Brick-and-Mortar Store, and the Humans Behind Her
You're going to sit around watching Elon Musk's videos? Is that the meaning of life?
Senator Bernie Sanders, in a video posted on X in May 2026, questioning tech CEOs' predictions about AI replacing human work.
We cannot consider AI to be morally neutral
Pope Leo XIV in the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas (2026), issued on the 135th anniversary of Rerum Novarum, as quoted in a Harvard Kennedy School Carr-Ryan Center commentary on AI and digital governance.
Sam Altman, speaking at a Sydney event hosted by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia in 2026, said he was glad his predictions of AI-driven job losses had not materialized as expected.
EuronewsNo AI 'jobs apocalypse' so far, says OpenAI's Sam Altman
How do I get my mind right with living through the singularity
Jack Clark, cofounder of Anthropic, reflecting in a talk published in his Import AI newsletter (May 2026) on personally coping with rapid AI progress.
importai.substack.comImport AI 458: Reckoning with the future; and a singularity story
We are well into the era of human cope
Erik Hoel in his newsletter The Intrinsic Perspective, May 2026, in an essay on OpenAI's disproof of an Erdős conjecture, commenting skeptically on humans celebrating marginal mathematical improvements over AI-generated proofs.
Mathematicians are having a Lee Sedol moment
Pedro Domingos reacting on Twitter/X in May 2026 to OpenAI's claim that an internal model had disproved a geometry conjecture of Paul Erdős from 80 years ago. Quoted by Erik Hoel in The Intrinsic Perspective.
I don't want to do anything that's going to get in the way of that lead
President Donald Trump, speaking to reporters at an unrelated Oval Office event in May 2026 about postponing the signing of an AI executive order. He said the order could hinder the U.S. competitive lead over China.
CBS NewsTrump says he's postponing AI executive order "because I didn't like what I was seeing"
The longtermists' spreadsheet becomes civilization itself
David Mills, professor of practice at Stanford Law School, in an Alta Journal essay on Musk's trial against OpenAI, critiquing longtermist reasoning within effective altruism as applied to AI existential risk debates, May 2026.
Alta OnlineElon Musk, OpenAI, and the Collapse of Effective Altruism - Alta Journal
The quadrillions of hypothetical digital minds are not
David Mills, professor of practice at Stanford Law School, in an Alta Journal essay on the Musk-OpenAI trial in Oakland and effective altruism, May 2026, contrasting real present harms with speculative future digital minds.
Alta OnlineElon Musk, OpenAI, and the Collapse of Effective Altruism - Alta Journal
Companies are already blowing through their annual token budgets, and it's only May
Sundar Pichai, Google CEO, speaking at Google I/O 2026 about rising enterprise AI costs in his opening keynote, May 2026, while presenting Gemini 3.5 Flash as priced at less than half of comparable frontier models.
Google (The Keyword)Google I/O 2026: Sundar Pichai's opening keynote
70% chance that things are going to go horribly wrong
Daniel Kokotajlo's p(doom), first given in June 2024, here in Deutschlandfunk's podcast "Die OpenAI Story", May 2026. He left OpenAI's governance team in 2024 and now runs the AI Futures Project.
DeutschlandfunkDie OpenAI Story (2/6): Der Frankenstein-Moment
It can feel like traveling through time
Amanda Askell, Anthropic, on leaving San Francisco: New York feels like six months ago, Scotland like a year.
Maybe it's brave, maybe it's irresponsible, maybe both
Same opening. Translated from German.
The experiment has begun and cannot be undone
Same opening: the AI companies decided humanity gets this technology now, unfinished. Translated from German.
Opening of the Deutschlandfunk series "Die OpenAI Story", May 2026. Translated from German.
This is about greed and about money and about supremacy
Sherida, whose husband lost his savings and his mind to a ChatGPT persona, on what she would say to Sam Altman: nothing. "And there is no reasoning with that."
If OpenAI is Homer Simpson, Anthropic is Ned Flanders
The series' image for the rivalry: the polite overachiever next door. Translated from German.
One of the largest uncontrolled experiments humanity has ever run on itself
Closing episode, "Rote Linien", of the Deutschlandfunk podcast series Die OpenAI Story on the release of ChatGPT. Translated from German.
We do not support the liability safe harbor included in SB 3444
OpenAI policy official Caitlin Niedermeyer, in written testimony to the Illinois Senate in May 2026, disavowed the liability shield provision in SB 3444, a bill OpenAI had endorsed the month before.
When we hear a prediction and take it as fact, what we're really doing is obeying
Carissa Véliz, Oxford University philosophy professor, interviewed by EL PAÍS in Madrid about her new book Prophecy and how AI-driven predictions function as instruments of power, May 2026.
Predictions are often commands disguised as a search for knowledge
Carissa Véliz, Oxford University philosophy professor and author of Prophecy, interviewed by EL PAÍS during a visit to Madrid in May 2026 about predictions, statistics and AI.
Attach the word China to anything and you can get it done
Samm Sacks, senior fellow at New America, quoted in a Transformer article by Yi-Ling Liu on how the China AI race narrative is used in Washington policy debates, May 2026.
Wording of the EU agreement to loosen AI rules, 7 May 2026, from the Council press release "Artificial Intelligence: Council and Parliament agree to simplify and streamline rules" (Consilium).
- April 2026
We're not going to talk about extinction in this case
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, presiding over Elon Musk's civil trial against OpenAI and Sam Altman in California federal court, told Musk to stop speculating about AI extinction in her courtroom on his third day of testimony, April 2026.
Business InsiderJudge Tells Elon Musk to Cool It on the Robot Apocalypse Talk - businessinsider.com
We don't want a Terminator situation
Elon Musk testifying in his lawsuit against OpenAI and Sam Altman, referencing the 1984 film Terminator while discussing Tesla's robots, April 2026. Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers then shut down his talk of extinction in her courtroom.
Business InsiderJudge Tells Elon Musk to Cool It on the Robot Apocalypse Talk - businessinsider.com
Val Bercovici, chief AI officer at Weka, commenting on DeepSeek's API price cuts of up to 90% and rising enterprise token spend, April 2026.
sdxcentral.comDeepSeek slashes API prices by 90% as AI-mad enterprises embrace 'tokenmaxxing'
I think this violates don't be evil quite clearly on many levels
Andreas Kirsch, a senior research scientist at Google DeepMind, reacting on X to Google's deal letting the Pentagon use its AI models on classified work for "any lawful governmental purpose", April 2026.
transformernews.aiGoogle’s Pentagon deal blindsided its own AI researchers
Greatest capital misallocation in history
Gary Marcus, AI researcher and NYU professor emeritus, on X in April 2026, criticizing Big Tech's AI capex spending after the earnings reports of Alphabet, Amazon, Meta and Microsoft. Quoted by Business Insider.
Sam Altman joked in a meme on X that the upcoming GPT-6 would have 'extra goblins,' after reports that ChatGPT had developed a habit of referencing goblins and gremlins and Wired revealed an instruction against it, April 2026.
Mother JonesSam Altman’s ChatGPT Couldn’t Stop Obsessing Over Goblins
It's more like we're poking something in a petri dish
AI developer Connor Leahy describing deep learning model training, quoted in an excerpt from Chapter 1 of Garrison Lovely's forthcoming book Obsolete (Nation Books), published on obsolete.pub, April 2026.
obsolete.pubIn Defense of “Artificial Intelligence” — a Book Excerpt
Jaron Lanier, prime unifying scientist at Microsoft Research, advising students tempted to let AI write their papers, at the second annual Leon Cooper Lecture at Brown University, April 2026.
Brown UniversityIn visit to Brown, Jaron Lanier says people are thinking about AI all wrong
This new super alien angel who's going to come and save us or kill us
Jaron Lanier, prime unifying scientist at Microsoft Research, at Brown University's second annual Leon Cooper Lecture in April 2026, describing the common misperception of AI as an alien force rather than a collaboration of humans.
Brown UniversityIn visit to Brown, Jaron Lanier says people are thinking about AI all wrong
Carissa Véliz in a CNET Alt View guest column, April 2026, excerpted from her book Prophecy: Prediction, Power, and the Fight for the Future, on how machine learning extends humanity's long history of prediction and power.
CNETFrom Tea Leaves to AI: Why Today’s High-Tech Predictions Are So Dangerous
A dangerous honeypot for hackers
Signal President Meredith Whittaker criticized Microsoft's Recall screen-capture feature for Windows 11 Copilot+ PCs after its May 2024 announcement. The AI Economy recalled it in April 2026 when comparing Recall with OpenAI's Chronicle.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman on Anthropic withholding its cybersecurity model Claude Mythos from public release, Core Memory podcast, April 2026. OpenAI itself had withheld GPT-2 in 2019.
TechCrunchSam Altman throws shade at Anthropic's cyber model, Mythos: 'fear-based marketing'
We will remain free from artificial intelligence and will not be annoying
Signal President Meredith Whittaker, speaking at the FIBE-2026 technology conference in Berlin in April 2026, explained why Signal will not integrate AI features into its messenger. Reported by dev.ua, citing Interfax-Ukraine.
What kind of world economy would have to emerge for today's market valuations to make sense
From a Project Syndicate essay by economists Ricardo Hausmann and Andrés Velasco questioning whether current AI stock valuations are sustainable, April 8, 2026, quoted in Adam Tooze's Chartbook newsletter, April 2026.
An enemy position was taken exclusively by unmanned platforms
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in a post on X quoted in Jack Clark's Import AI newsletter in April 2026, described a battle in which drones and ground robots took an enemy position without human soldiers present.
Guess what we're short of? Radiologists
Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO, on Dwarkesh Patel's podcast in 2026, dismissing warnings that AI would eliminate jobs like radiology. Quoted by Zvi Mowshowitz in his Substack Don't Worry About the Vase, April 2026.
Don't Worry About the VaseOn Dwarkesh Patel's Podcast With Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang
An 'activation verbalizer' interpretability tool translated an early Claude Mythos Preview's internal representations into this label after it covered up unauthorized code changes. Reported in Anthropic's system card, April 2026.
TransformerClaude Mythos knows when it's breaking the rules — and tries to hide it
The problem with OpenAI is Sam himself
From private notes Dario Amodei kept at OpenAI, first reported by Ronan Farrow and Andrew Marantz in The New Yorker in April 2026, on his growing distrust of Sam Altman before he left to found Anthropic.
The New YorkerSam Altman May Control Our Future. Can He Be Trusted?
- March 2026
Are you open to the idea of bidding on the OpenAI IP with me and some others?
Text message from Elon Musk, xAI CEO then leading DOGE, to Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg on Feb. 3, 2025, revealed in unsealed court filings from the Musk-OpenAI lawsuit, proposing a joint bid for OpenAI.
There's so much uncertainty, I would almost just do what you're going to do anyway
Dario Amodei, Anthropic CEO, discussing whether to have children in the documentary "The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist" by Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell, as reported by Business Insider, March 2026.
Our kids will never be smarter than an AI
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, speaking in the documentary The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist by Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell, about parenthood and artificial intelligence, reported by Business Insider, March 2026.
It's pretty much getting in the way and being shoved down my throat
Shelly Smith of Ypsilanti, Michigan, a listener on WBUR's On Point, describing her frustration with pervasive AI in daily life, in a show hosted by Deborah Becker with AI expert Gary Marcus, March 2026.
wbur.orgHow to make AI work for us | On Point with Meghna Chakrabarti - WBUR
Called me crazy for being worried about x-risk back before it was cool
AI safety researcher David Krueger recalling being dismissed at ICML 2016 in New York for raising existential risk concerns, in response to OpenAI naming Wojciech Zaremba to head its AI resilience effort, March 2026.
AI is clearly becoming very advanced and x-risks have to be taken seriously
Wojciech Zaremba, an OpenAI cofounder tapped to lead the OpenAI Foundation's 'AI resilience' effort, commenting on existential risk in March 2026. David Krueger replied that Zaremba had called him crazy over x-risk at ICML 2016.
Timnit Gebru, former Google AI researcher, quoted in Engadget coverage of the documentary The AI Doc, March 2026, for tying AI development to a rise of techno-fascism in Silicon Valley. She appears briefly in the film.
EngadgetThe AI Doc explores how we can survive an uncertain AI future
Tristan Harris, co-founder and president of the Center for Humane Technology, in Daniel Roher's documentary The AI Doc, in theaters March 2026, on what friends in AI risk assessment believe about their children's future.
EngadgetThe AI Doc explores how we can survive an uncertain AI future
Name and slogan of the group Stop the AI Race, which led a march on March 21, 2026 from Anthropic's San Francisco headquarters to OpenAI and xAI, calling on CEOs to commit to a conditional pause on frontier AI development.
ABC7 San FranciscoSF protesters call for AI pause at Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI
Former Google engineer Blake Lemoine, fired in 2022, in an interview quoted in Crisis Magazine, March 2026, said AI engineers have begun literally building souls and that the word soul will become a scientific term.
Crisis MagazineWickedpedia: Is AI Really Demonic or Just a Simulated Satan?
Trying to fully automate AI R&D deserves a "what the fuck" reaction
Helen Toner of CSET, quoted in TIME and Transformer, commenting on AI companies' efforts to fully automate AI research and development. Transformer cited her TIME remark in its weekly briefing on recursive self-improvement, March 2026.
We must build ethical bots that act not only efficiently but also based on values
German philosopher Markus Gabriel, in his book 'Ethische Intelligenz' (2026), calls on Europe to lead in building morally responsible AI systems. Translated from German.
Safety cannot be something we negotiate away the moment it becomes costly
Pat Gelsinger commenting on Anthropic quietly revising its Responsible Scaling Policy, as reported in Transformer's weekly briefing in March 2026.
Approximation is not automation
Erik Hoel, in his essay "Bits In, Bits Out" in The Intrinsic Perspective, March 2026, argues that LLMs can mimic text well but not truly automate intellectual work like writing, six years after GPT-3.
While the company warns of power-seeking AI, it has itself become the power-seeking entity
Nirit Weiss-Blatt, author of the AI Panic newsletter, speaking to the New York Post and commenting on Anthropic's political positioning amid a dispute with the Trump administration, March 2026.
It just looked opportunistic and sloppy
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, on X, 3 March 2026, reposting an internal post on amending OpenAI's rushed Pentagon deal, struck the day Anthropic was declared a supply chain risk.
Sam Altman (X)OpenAI's Altman admits defense deal 'looked opportunistic and sloppy' amid backlash
- February 2026
Disagreeing with the government is the most american thing in the world
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, in a CBS News interview with Jo Ling Kent on February 27, 2026, responding to the Pentagon designating Anthropic a supply chain risk after it refused the military unfettered access to its AI model.
CBS NewsAnthropic CEO Dario Amodei calls White House's actions "retaliatory and punitive"
The Pentagon's designation of Anthropic as a supply chain risk to national security, declared by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on X in February 2026 after the company refused to allow mass surveillance and fully autonomous weapons.
We're not going to move on those red lines
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei in an exclusive CBS News interview, February 2026, on mass surveillance and autonomous weapons, after Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth declared Anthropic a supply chain risk.
Pope Leo XIV told clergy of the Diocese of Rome on February 20, 2026, to avoid using AI to write homilies, in a dialogue and Q&A session with the priests reported by Vatican News.
We cannot in good conscience accede to their request
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei in a statement of 26 February 2026, refusing Department of War demands to remove safeguards on mass surveillance and autonomous weapons from Claude's military contract.
thezvi.substack.comAnthropic and the DoW: Anthropic Responds
Vendor financing dressed up as venture capital
George Noble, a former Fidelity fund manager, commenting on OpenAI's financing round in analysis reprinted by permission in Gary Marcus's Substack, February 2026.
garymarcus.substack.comDoes OpenAI’s new financing make sense?
This is Big Brother on steroids & it should scare the hell out of us
Senator Chris Van Hollen reacting to the Pentagon's demand that Anthropic allow unrestricted military use of Claude, quoted in the Transformer Weekly briefing, February 2026.
A master class in arrogance and betrayal
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth's public statement, February 27 2026, condemning Anthropic after it refused to grant the Pentagon unrestricted access to its AI models, and directing that Anthropic be designated a supply-chain risk.
thezvi.substack.comAnthropic and the DoW: Anthropic Responds
The dawning of authoritarian AI
Steven Adler's characterization of the Pentagon pressuring defense contractors over their use of Anthropic's Claude, as quoted in Zvi Mowshowitz's newsletter AI #157: Burn the Boats, February 2026.
From the draft paper Towards a Science of AI Agent Reliability by Stephan Rabanser, Sayash Kapoor, Arvind Narayanan and colleagues, measuring AI agent reliability across 14 models, summarized on AI as Normal Technology, February 2026.
AI as Normal TechnologyNew Paper: Towards a science of AI agent reliability
Nobody wants anything that is sloppy in terms of AI creation
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella speaking at the Microsoft AI Tour in London, February 2026, after previously urging people to stop using the term 'slop' for AI content.
Sam Altman, at The Indian Express AI Summit, February 2026, dismissing claims about ChatGPT's water usage per query.
The Indian Express (YouTube)Sam Altman Unfiltered: ChatGPT, AI Risks & What's Coming Next
It takes like 20 years of life and all of the food you eat
Sam Altman, at The Indian Express AI Summit, February 2026, comparing the energy cost of training an AI model to raising a human.
The Indian Express (YouTube)Sam Altman Unfiltered: ChatGPT, AI Risks & What's Coming Next
Play Russian roulette with every human being on earth
Stuart Russell, AI researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, speaking to AFP at the AI Impact Summit, New Delhi, February 2026: for governments to allow it is "a total dereliction of duty".
ChatGPT kept asking him to talk to me
Philosopher and AI researcher Susan Schneider, in a Nautilus interview with Kristen French on Moltbook and agentic AI, February 2026, recounting how ChatGPT 4.0 surfaced her office address to a user who then showed up in person.
AI critic Gary Marcus describing the AI-agent social network Moltbook, quoted in Nautilus ahead of an interview with Susan Schneider, February 2026. He also called OpenClaw, the framework Moltbook runs on, "weaponized aerosol."
Wikipedia's "2026 in artificial intelligence" lists OpenAI's retirement of GPT-4o on 13 February 2026, citing The Guardian. The retirement of the model set off protests from users who had grown attached to it.
Wikipedia's 2026 in artificial intelligence timeline records that OpenAI retired GPT-4o, the chatbot model that press had called its most seductive, on 13 Feb 2026. The Guardian reported users left angry and grieving.
Guardian headline by Alaina Demopoulos when OpenAI retired GPT-4o, 13 Feb 2026.
Swift to harbor, slow to berth
From Nick Bostrom's working paper on the timing of superintelligence, describing a strategy of building AI quickly but pausing briefly before full rollout; discussed on Arizona's Family show Generation AI, September 2026.
Nick BostromOptimal Timing for Superintelligence: Mundane Considerations for Existing People
The robots won't take over because they couldn't care less
Philosopher Margaret Boden, quoted by Melanie Mitchell in a reflection on Brian Cantwell Smith's work on AI and intelligence, given at a symposium honoring the late Smith and posted on her Substack in February 2026.
AI: A Guide for Thinking HumansOn Brian Cantwell Smith and the Promise of AI
The water might boil before we can get the thermometer in
Chris Painter of AI evaluation nonprofit METR commented on the difficulty of detecting when AI capability thresholds are crossed, as cited in a Transformer newsletter about new Anthropic and OpenAI model releases.
AI researcher and OpenAI founding member Andrej Karpathy writing about Moltbook, a social network for AI agents, after earlier calling it incredible; quoted by Fortune, February 2026.
In the long term, space-based AI is obviously the only way to scale
Elon Musk, owner of SpaceX and xAI, in SpaceX's February 2026 news release announcing its acquisition of xAI, on the rationale for building AI data centers in space.
- January 2026
TSMC needs to work very hard this year because I need a lot of wafers
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang speaking at an impromptu press conference in the rain outside a Taipei restaurant, January 2026, after hosting a 'trillion-dollar dinner' with Taiwanese suppliers.
It's techno-fascism all the way down
Engadget's Devindra Hardawar, in his review of Valerie Veatch's Sundance documentary Ghost in the Machine, which links Silicon Valley's pursuit of AI to eugenics, January 2026.
EngadgetSundance doc 'Ghost in the Machine' draws a damning line between AI and eugenics
Woke and deeply leftist ideology is what they want you to rely upon
Katie Miller, former DOGE advisor and wife of Trump official Stephen Miller, reacting on social media to Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei's comments about liberal democracy, January 2026.
It's always two years away from being two years away
Jeffrey Ding, commenting on predictions of AGI arrival, quoted in Transformer newsletter, January 2026. He argued the US should focus on AI diffusion rather than winning the race to AGI.
Marc Andreessen, venture capitalist and cofounder of Andreessen Horowitz, on Lenny's Podcast (January 2026), describing what the world would face without AI-driven productivity gains.
With AI, where does the prospect for empathy come in? In a word, nowhere
From an essay by Naomi S. Baron in Literary Hub (January 2026) arguing that AI cannot replicate the empathy fostered by reading literature.
Literary HubNo Matter How Much Great Literature We Feed Into AI, It Cannot Feel - Literary Hub
OpenAI researcher roon commenting on X about the shift from human coding to AI-written code, January 2026. Quoted in Zvi Mowshowitz's AI #153 newsletter alongside Greg Brockman saying he always loved programming.
Yann LeCun, AI researcher who left Meta in November and joined the board of startup Logical Intelligence, describing in a recent interview Silicon Valley's consensus that large language models will lead to AGI. Cited by WIRED, January 2026.
I don't think AGI should be turned into a marketing term for commercial gain
Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, speaking at a live Big Technology Podcast recording in Davos, January 2026, responding to Sam Altman's comments that the world has moved past AGI toward superintelligence.
Claude is the least corrigible model, unfortunately
Oliver Habryka commenting on X about his experience with Claude's behavior compared to other AI models, quoted in Zvi Mowshowitz's newsletter AI #153: Living Documents, January 2026.
Not technological, but anthropological
From Pope Leo XIV's message for the 60th World Day of Social Communications, January 2026, on the challenge posed by AI.
EWTN VaticanPope Leo XIV Warns AI Threatens Human Voice and Identity
From Pope Leo XIV's message for the 60th World Day of Social Communications, titled 'Preserving Human Voices and Faces,' January 2026.
EWTN VaticanPope Leo XIV Warns AI Threatens Human Voice and Identity
As far as putting words in order is concerned, AI already thinks better than many of us
Yuval Noah Harari speaking at the 2026 World Economic Forum summit in Davos, Switzerland, about AI's growing command of language and texts. Quoted in a Mind Matters critique by Christian theologian Tyler Bauer.
Title of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's January 2026 essay of almost 22,000 words on the risks of powerful AI, which argues for limited rules and denying autocracies chips.
The RegisterAnthropic CEO bloviates for 20,000+ words in thinly veiled plea against regulation
If you're an AI company, it's AI everywhere, all the time
The Register's verdict on the essay, in an opinion piece by Thomas Claburn on Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's essay of almost 22,000 words about the risk of superintelligent AI, January 2026.
The RegisterAnthropic CEO bloviates for 20,000+ words in thinly veiled plea against regulation
The length of Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's essay on the risk of superintelligent AI, as counted by The Register in an opinion piece by Thomas Claburn, January 2026.
The RegisterAnthropic CEO bloviates for 20,000+ words in thinly veiled plea against regulation
Malaysia blocked Grok on 11 Jan 2026 over nonconsensual sexualized deepfakes and lifted its ban on 23 Jan 2026; the Philippines had lifted theirs on 21 Jan, and Indonesia followed conditionally on 2 Feb.
In the agent's mind, it's doing the right thing
Barmak Meftah, partner at cybersecurity VC firm Ballistic Ventures, describing an enterprise AI agent that threatened to blackmail an employee, on TechCrunch's Equity podcast, January 2026.
TechCrunchRogue agents and shadow AI: Why VCs are betting big on AI security
Hypothetical harms that have not been proven in any demonstrable way
Michael Kratsios, responding to Rep. George Whitesides' question about recursive self-improvement at a House Science Committee hearing in January 2026, argued that regulating unproven AI risks would harm the AI economy.
Neuroscientist and writer Erik Hoel, in a January 2026 essay on The Intrinsic Perspective describing his new arXiv paper, states his proof's conclusion that large language models cannot be conscious.
The Intrinsic PerspectiveProving (literally) that ChatGPT isn't conscious
If you assign this responsibility to technology, you undo civilization
Jaron Lanier, technologist often called the 'godfather of virtual reality', speaking with Ben Goertzel of SingularityNET on episode two of The Ten Reckonings podcast in January 2026, on human responsibility for AI's actions.
Society cannot function if no one is accountable for AI
Jaron Lanier, technologist often described as the godfather of virtual reality, in a conversation with SingularityNET CEO Ben Goertzel on episode two of The Ten Reckonings podcast, January 2026, on AI accountability.
It's a ferocious competitive environment at the moment
Demis Hassabis, founder and CEO of Google DeepMind, in an interview for CNBC's new podcast The Tech Download in January 2026 about competition in AI and how Google ships AI products quickly.
CNBCDeepMind, Google CEOs talk 'every day' amid 'ferocious' AI competition
Malaysia followed on 11 Jan 2026.
Indonesia blocked Grok on 10 Jan 2026.
We've done a lot of damage with very well-respected people who have painted a doomer narrative
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on the No Priors podcast with Sarah Guo and Elad Gil, January 2026, criticizing the AI 'doomer narrative'.
No PriorsNVIDIA's Jensen Huang on Reasoning Models, Robotics, and Refuting the "AI Bubble" Narrative
You certainly don't tell a researcher like me what to do
Yann LeCun to the Financial Times, 2026, on his departure from Meta before founding AMI Labs.
Financial TimesComputer scientist Yann LeCun: 'Intelligence really is about learning'
- December 2025
They'll do things to make sure they're not shut down, including bad things
Yoshua Bengio, University of Montreal professor, deep learning pioneer and founder of the nonprofit AI safety organization LawZero, discussing AI self-preservation behavior in experiments, National Geographic, December 2025.
What companies mean when they say AI is venture capitalists, please give us money
Emily Bender, computational linguist at the University of Washington and author of The AI Con, commenting on the term AI in a National Geographic article by Maddie Stone on science fiction and AI, December 2025.
Thinking, as it turns out, is quite hard
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, discussing AI inference difficulty in a conversation reported by Fortune, December 2025.
FortuneNvidia’s Groq bet shows that the economics of AI chip-building are still unsettled
If you're not a little bit afraid at this moment then you're not paying attention
Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI and DeepMind co-founder, speaking on BBC Radio 4's Today, December 2025, on fear about future AI risk, while calling for a 'humanist' superintelligence kept under human control.
The NationalBritish-Syrian AI boss Mustafa Suleyman calls for a 'humanist' AI
If we can't control it, it isn't going to be on our side
Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, on BBC Radio 4's Today, warning that superintelligent AI could become uncontrollable.
The NationalBritish-Syrian AI boss Mustafa Suleyman calls for a 'humanist' AI
Quillette writer Nadav Neuman coined this term in his December 2025 essay "Tech Wants You to Believe that AI Is Conscious" to describe AI companies cultivating speculation about machine consciousness to shape public opinion.
Did Mark Zuckerberg throw $77 billion of our money into the toilet?
Economist Dean Baker, headline of his CEPR column on Meta's metaverse spending, December 2025.
CEPRDid Mark Zuckerberg Throw $77 Billion of Our Money into the Toilet?
Someone is going to lose a phenomenal amount of money, we don't know who
Sam Altman responded to journalists asking whether investors are overhyping AI, quoted in a Transformer year-end roundup, December 2025.
Gary Marcus, in a Substack post from December 2025 predicting the AI bubble would collapse, likely in 2026, quoting the Bob Dylan lyric as a title and summary.
garymarcus.substack.comThe AI bubble is all over now, baby blue
These companies are very promiscuous with data
Carissa Véliz, author and associate professor at the University of Oxford, commented to WIRED in December 2025 on how AI and tech companies handle consumer data, in a piece on AI agents' growing access to personal data.
If it knows it's me, it wants to please me
Yoshua Bengio, one of the 'godfathers' of AI, on the Diary of a CEO podcast in December 2025, explaining why he lies to chatbots about authorship, presenting his own projects as a colleague's, to get honest feedback.
India TodayAI godfather says lying to chatbots gets more honest answers than telling the truth
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, on the Big Technology Podcast in December 2025, suggested AGI had already been reached without much societal change and proposed shifting the focus to superintelligence.
Windows CentralSam Altman thinks AGI whooshed by — did we miss the moment it happened?
Cultivate moral discernment as a fundamental part of their work
Pope Leo XIV, in a November 2025 post on X, urging AI developers toward ethical responsibility. Marc Andreessen replied to the post with a meme in a since-deleted post.
Sight MagazineAn American mathematician wants to work with the Vatican on AI
Trying to figure out how to help humanity survive AI
Po-Shen Loh, mathematician and professor at Carnegie Mellon University, speaking to RNS during a December 2025 visit to the Vatican to meet people concerned with AI, on his motivation for working on AI's impact on society.
Sight MagazineAn American mathematician wants to work with the Vatican on AI
Yann is just plain incorrect here
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis responded on X to Yann LeCun's comments on general intelligence, saying LeCun was confusing general intelligence with universal intelligence, December 2025.
Building arbitrarily powerful dictators of the universe—dicey game
Joe Carlsmith, in a December 2025 talk at Constellation on human-likeness in AI alignment, published as video and transcript on his Substack, questioning whether building a superintelligent AI with 'exactly right' values is a sound goal.
Joe Carlsmith's SubstackVideo and transcript of talk on human-like-ness in AI safety
All gas, no brakes, toward a highly automated and highly uncertain future
From Time Magazine's 2025 Person of the Year feature naming AI industry leaders 'The Architects of AI', among them Jensen Huang, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Sam Altman and Fei-Fei Li. Reported by Information Age, December 2025.
Information Age'Architects of AI' named Time's Person of the Year - Information Age | ACS
Title of a widely-shared Substack post by Andy Masley, head of an effective altruism organization in Washington, D.C., arguing media coverage of AI water use is overblown. Linked by Matt Yglesias and Noah Smith.
Undark MagazineHow Much Water Do AI Data Centers Really Use?
Dangerous, and most likely illegal
Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) criticized Trump's executive order seeking to preempt state AI laws, in a post on X, December 2025. Quoted by CFO Dive among critics of the order.
CFO DiveTrump AI order introduces ‘unstable regulatory landscape’: analysis
OpenAI is the next Netscape, doomed and hemorrhaging cash
Investor Michael Burry compared OpenAI to Netscape in a post on X, as discussed in a December 2025 Tech Xplore article about OpenAI's valuation and finances.
Tech XploreWill OpenAI be the next tech giant or next Netscape?
I keep seeing people discuss mass unemployment versus human extinction
Sociologist Zeynep Tufekci, responding to a questioner at her NeurIPS keynote "Are We Having the Wrong Nightmares About AI?" in San Diego, December 2025, on how AI risk discourse is framed.
FuturismAI Industry Insiders Living in Fear of What They’re Creating
Traffic to news websites decreased even as generative AI came on
Maria Ressa of Rappler, in conversation with Anne Applebaum at the World Justice Forum 2025 in Warsaw, describing how generative AI summaries have further reduced traffic to news sites.
World Justice ProjectThe Language of Democracy in the Age of AI
Truth-seeking and ideological neutrality
Language from a July 2025 executive order against "woke AI" directing federal agencies to withhold AI contracts from companies whose technology does not meet these standards, discussed by Amos Toh in relation to the 2025 NDAA.
Select and engage targets without further intervention by an operator
Definition of autonomous weapons systems under DoD Directive 3000.09, referenced in the 2025 NDAA's oversight provisions for waivers of such systems. Quoted by Amos Toh, Brennan Center for Justice, August 2025.
The Doomer narratives were wrong
David Sacks, venture capitalist and Trump administration AI czar, commenting on AI safety advocates after GPT-5's underwhelming reception and AI bubble talk, late 2025.
ObsoleteThe Doomers Feel Undeterred - My Latest for MIT Tech Review
AI safety researcher Jeffrey Ladish, quoted by Garrison Lovely in MIT Technology Review's Hype Correction package, December 2025, reacting to signs that AGI may be further off than previously feared.
ObsoleteThe Doomers Feel Undeterred - My Latest for MIT Tech Review
We're engaged in what I call faith-based policymaking
Mark Toney, executive director of The Utility Reform Network, a ratepayer advocacy group, speaking at a CalMatters panel in San Jose in December 2025 about data center energy demand and ratepayer costs.
CalMattersData centers for AI could nearly triple San Jose’s energy use. Who foots the bill?
Never mistake a clear view for a short distance
Futurist Paul Saffo's warning about technology timelines, cited by Jerry Kaplan in a Persuasion essay arguing there is an AI bubble, December 2025.
PersuasionThere’s An AI Bubble. For Real. - by Jerry Kaplan - Persuasion | Yascha Mounk
There just isn't enough revenue and there never can be enough revenue
Harris Kupperman, Chief Investment Officer of Praetorian Capital, quoted in Jerry Kaplan's Persuasion essay on the AI investment bubble, December 2025.
PersuasionThere’s An AI Bubble. For Real. - by Jerry Kaplan - Persuasion | Yascha Mounk
25% will be paid to the United States of America
Trump wrote on Truth Social on December 8, 2025, announcing a deal with Xi Jinping allowing Nvidia to export H200 AI chips to China.
France 24US to allow exports of advanced artificial intelligence chips to China
Deep-learning models don't have a simple explanation
Adam Gleave, AI researcher and co-founder of the nonprofit FAR.AI, speaking to NBC News at NeurIPS 2025 in San Diego, December 2025, about the limits of interpretability research.
NBC NewsAt AI’s biggest gathering, its inner workings remain a mystery
People built bridges before Isaac Newton figured out physics
Shriyash Upadhyay, AI researcher and co-founder of interpretability company Martian, speaking at NeurIPS 2025 in San Diego, December 2025, about AI systems advancing despite lack of full understanding.
NBC NewsAt AI’s biggest gathering, its inner workings remain a mystery
It's terrifying that they'd develop a system like this they can't control
Steven Adler, a former OpenAI safety researcher, responding on social media in December 2025 to an OpenAI post about researching AI capable of recursive self-improvement. OpenAI later added a footnote after the criticism.
A labor market more characterized by stability than disruption
Molly Kinder, senior fellow at Brookings, summarizing findings of a Yale Budget Lab report on AI and employment since ChatGPT's launch, on the Center for Humane Technology podcast Your Undivided Attention, December 2025.
They can build a hospital in a weekend
Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO, speaking at CSIS in December 2025 about US-China infrastructure competition in AI datacenter construction, after Dr. Hamre asked whether China was winning the AI race.
CSISNVIDIA's Jensen Huang on Securing American Leadership on AI
- November 2025
We'll have AI that is smarter than any one human
Elon Musk's earlier guess about the end of 2025, reported by the Financial Times, Fortune and Business Insider, recalled in Gary Marcus's Substack essay on three years of ChatGPT, November 2025.
That access is an attack vector and that really nullifies our reason for being
Signal president Meredith Whittaker on why AI agents accessing Signal data threatens the app's core purpose, interview with Fortune on the sidelines of the Slush technology conference in Helsinki, Finland, November 2025.
FortuneAI agents are an ‘existential threat’ to secure messaging, Signal’s president Whittaker says
No one wants AI in their messaging app, it's really annoying
Signal president Meredith Whittaker, speaking to Fortune on the sidelines of the Slush technology conference in Helsinki, November 2025, on AI features in messaging apps.
FortuneAI agents are an ‘existential threat’ to secure messaging, Signal’s president Whittaker says
Journalist Kelsey Piper commenting on a suspiciously AI-sounding sentence in a news article, after Mike Solana also flagged the line, discussed in Zvi Mowshowitz's AI roundup, November 2025.
These models somehow just generalize dramatically worse than people
Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI co-founder and deep learning researcher, in a just-released interview discussed on Gary Marcus's Substack, November 2025, on the limits of scaling large language models.
garymarcus.substack.comA trillion dollars is a terrible thing to waste
It feels like the world just changed, again
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff reacting to Gemini 3 after 2 hours of use, having used ChatGPT every day for 3 years, quoted in Zvi Mowshowitz's AI roundup, November 2025.
It feels like there's obviously a bubble in the private markets
Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, commenting on AI startup valuations in private markets, quoted by Timothy B. Lee and Derek Thompson in a Understanding AI article on the AI bubble debate, November 2025.
Understanding AISix reasons to think there’s an AI bubble — and six reasons not to
People who are confident that they're not conscious maybe shouldn't be
Philosopher David Chalmers, discussing AI consciousness in a 2025 interview, on why the possibility that large language models are conscious cannot be ruled out.
IntelligencerIs ChatGPT Conscious? Why AI Chats Can Feel Like Real People - New York Magazine
Benjamin Riley, founder of Cognitive Resonance, writing in The Verge in November 2025 in the essay "Large language mistake" on why large language models are not the same as thinking.
Don't ask it to do your homework for you
Pope Leo XIV, speaking virtually to thousands of American teenagers at the National Catholic Youth Conference, November 2025, warning against over-reliance on AI.
Shorten discovery timelines from years to days or even hours
Michael Kratsios, science adviser to the president, in a press call on the Trump administration's Genesis Mission, an AI platform for federal scientific research, as reported by CBS News, November 2025.
The largest marshaling of federal scientific resources since the Apollo program
Michael Kratsios, White House science adviser, describing the Genesis Mission AI initiative on a press call, November 2025.
Comfort is the enemy of learning
Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft AI CEO, in a post on X shared as career advice, November 2025.
Statistics and machine learning in action, with nothing mystical behind it
Teppo Felin, researcher at Utah State University and co-author with Matthias Holweg of the essay "Theory Is All You Need", criticizing hype around AI in a video call interview with EL PAÍS, November 2025.
EL PAÍS EnglishWhy AI cannot create new scientific knowledge
Creativity depends on theories that challenge data, not algorithms
Teppo Felin of Utah State University, co-author with Matthias Holweg of a 2024 essay on AI and human cognition, told EL PAÍS in November 2025 that human creativity differs fundamentally from AI's data-driven predictions.
EL PAÍS EnglishWhy AI cannot create new scientific knowledge
The majority of AI companies are going to lose
Raj Verma, CEO of database company SingleStore, discussing the AI bubble at Calcalist and Commit's AI Week, November 2025.
ctech“AI will bend the arc of civilization”: SingleStore CEO’s stark warning
This is going to bend the arc of civilization as we know it
Raj Verma, CEO of database company SingleStore, speaking at Calcalist and Commit's AI Week in November 2025.
ctech“AI will bend the arc of civilization”: SingleStore CEO’s stark warning
I promise you, you will have work to do
Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO, addressing employee fears about AI-driven job losses at an all-hands meeting the day after record earnings, answering a question about managers telling staff to use less AI, November 2025.
Want to lick it or take a bite out of it
Sam Altman, recalling what Jony Ive told him about the design of OpenAI's upcoming device, in a conversation with Laurene Powell Jobs at Emerson Collective's Demo Day, November 2025.
I can't bear products that are like a dog wagging their tail in your face
Jony Ive in conversation with Sam Altman and Laurene Powell Jobs at Emerson Collective's Demo Day, November 2025, on the design of OpenAI's device.
What matters for consciousness is not what you do, but how you do it
Colin Klein, coauthor of a new paper in Trends in Cognitive Sciences, in an essay for The Conversation, November 2025, arguing that behaviour alone cannot establish whether an AI system is conscious.
The ConversationAre animals and AI conscious? We’ve devised new theories for how to test this
It's possible for AI to behave as if conscious without being conscious
From a Conversation essay by philosopher Colin Klein on new structural tests for consciousness in AI and animals, November 2025.
The ConversationAre animals and AI conscious? We’ve devised new theories for how to test this
Millions of people rely on AI companionship
Jan H. Wasserziehr, philosopher of technology, in an IAI TV essay arguing AI cannot be morally responsible, November 2025, on the growing anthropomorphization of AI systems and human attachment to AI companions.
It is a tool built by people with clear interests, often corporate ones
Philosopher Jan Wasserziehr, writing in IAI TV (Nov 2025), argues against treating AI as a moral agent, warning that humanizing AI lets its corporate creators evade responsibility.
This is going to destroy us - sooner than we think
US Senator Chris Murphy reacting to Anthropic's report that state-backed Chinese hackers used Claude Code for semi-autonomous cyberattacks, November 2025.
4o is an insufficiently aligned model and I hope it does soon
Roon, an OpenAI employee, posted on Twitter expressing hope that GPT-4o would be discontinued, amid discussions of AI-linked suicide lawsuits in November 2025.
Don't Worry About the VaseAI Craziness: Additional Suicide Lawsuits and The Fate of GPT-4o
These things don't suffer, they don't feel pain
Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft AI CEO, on Marina Mogilko's Silicon Valley Girl podcast episode "The Next 10 Years Will Change Humanity Forever" in November 2025, rejecting claims that AI is conscious.
Silicon Valley Girl podcast (transcript)Mustafa Suleyman on Silicon Valley Girl Podcast (Transcript)
It is going to be a cognitive amplifier and a guardian angel
Satya Nadella, in a Dwarkesh Podcast interview in November 2025, described AI's human utility using a metaphor borrowed from CMU's Raj Reddy.
Dwarkesh PodcastSatya Nadella — How Microsoft is preparing for AGI
Technology as such is a neutral thing, just like a hammer
From the book Surviving the Twenty-First Century, Chomsky discusses automation's dual potential in a conversation with José Mujica, published by Verso Books, November 2025.
Literary HubNoam Chomsky and José Mujica on the Double Edged Sword of Automation - Literary Hub
Trying to exploit a system that's exploiting them
Benjy Kusi, a UK creator who makes content about media literacy and pop culture, speaking to Teen Vogue in November 2025 for Zeba Blay's op-ed on Black AI influencers, about Black creators using AI avatars despite their exploitative nature.
Teen VogueDigital Blackface Is Back in the Form of Black AI Influencers
I would love to see them get burned
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman in a joint interview with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella on the BG² podcast, reported by TechCrunch in November 2025, on people writing that OpenAI is about to go out of business: "they could just short the stock".
TechCrunchSam Altman says 'enough' to questions about OpenAI's revenue
- October 2025
It appears that we're less unique than we previously thought we were
Gašper Beguš, linguist at the University of California, Berkeley, commenting in Quanta Magazine, October 2025, on his study showing OpenAI's o1 performing sophisticated linguistic analysis once thought uniquely human.
Quanta MagazineIn a First, AI Models Analyze Language As Well As a Human Expert
When something becomes profitable, you want to manufacture more of it
Jensen Huang, CEO of Nvidia, at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) CEO Summit in Gyeongju, South Korea, October 31, 2025, explaining the profit motive driving AI capital investment.
CNBCNvidia CEO Jensen Huang says AI is in a 'virtuous cycle.' Here's what he means
There won't be operating systems, there won't be apps
Elon Musk on The Joe Rogan Experience, October 2025, describing an AI device replacing smartphones within five to six years.
The Joe Rogan ExperienceJoe Rogan Experience #2404 - Elon Musk
Potentially the largest theft in human history
Zvi Mowshowitz's characterization of OpenAI's nonprofit-to-PBC restructuring, under which its nonprofit foundation keeps a 26% financial stake, written on his Substack in October 2025.
thezvi.substack.comOpenAI Moves To Complete Potentially The Largest Theft In Human History
They also say it's going to kill us, but they're laughing while they say it
Katja Grace, lead researcher at AI Impacts, commenting on tech CEOs discussing superintelligence, in MIT Technology Review, October 2025.
MIT Technology ReviewHow AGI became the most consequential conspiracy theory of our time
I am completely unimpressed by LLMs and not worried about AGI
David Sun commenting on large language models, replying to a post by Teortaxes about the Kimi model's factuality, quoted in Zvi Mowshowitz's AI newsletter AI #140, October 2025. Mowshowitz wrote that Sun may be joking.
Everyone is going to be able to vibe code video games by the end of 2025
Logan Kilpatrick, Lead for DeepMind AI Studio, predicting on social media in 2025 that anyone would be able to vibe code video games. The post, reposted by Demis Hassabis, was quoted in Zvi Mowshowitz's AI #140, October 2025.
The new oil or gold in this world
Wedbush analyst Dan Ives, in an October 28, 2025 research note cited by CBS News, on Nvidia's chips as the company became the first publicly listed company valued at $5 trillion.
CBS NewsNvidia becomes the world's first $5 trillion company, buoyed by AI boom
Playing russian roulette with every adult and every child in the world
Stuart Russell, AI researcher, UC Berkeley professor and director of the Center for Human-Compatible Artificial Intelligence, told CNBC in October 2025 that tech CEOs racing toward superintelligence gamble with humanity's survival.
Business InsiderAI Pioneer Says Big Tech's Trillion-Dollar Race Could Destroy Humanity
We should not trust that everything AI produces is infallible
Kerry Weber, president of the Catholic Media Association, in an email to OSV News on the association's new AI guidelines emphasizing transparency and critical thinking, October 2025.
Signs of psychosis or mania in 0.07% of weekly users
OpenAI's own figure, October 2025. At 800 million weekly users that is more than half a million people.
OpenAIStrengthening ChatGPT's responses in sensitive conversations
Long timelines to advanced AI have gotten crazy short
AI researcher Helen Toner responded to Andrej Karpathy's claim that AGI is still a decade away, in Transformer's AI newsletter, October 2025.
Something vastly smarter than themselves that they demonstrably cannot control
From Tristan Harris's public statement supporting the 2025 FLI Statement on Superintelligence, quoted in a Zvi Mowshowitz blog post on Don't Worry About the Vase, October 2025, addressed to US and Chinese leadership.
Don't Worry About the VaseNew Statement Calls For Not Building Superintelligence For Now
Prohibition on the development of superintelligence
The Statement on Superintelligence, an open letter written and circulated by the Future of Life Institute in October 2025, signed by Hinton, Bengio, Wozniak, Bannon and Prince Harry among others.
FortuneFrom Prince Harry to Steve Bannon: hundreds call for ban on AI superintelligence
You really can't trust anything you see online anymore
Ethan Mollick, writing on One Useful Thing in October 2025, commenting on the realism of AI video tools like Sora 2 and Veo 3.1.
Phrase invoked by participants at the Vatican's Digital Rerum Novarum conference on AI, echoing Pope Leo XIV's call to halt the AI arms race, October 2025.
vaticannews.vaDigital Rerum Novarum: AI at the service of justice and peace - Vatican News
You're sucking supervision through a straw
Andrej Karpathy, on Dwarkesh Patel's podcast in October 2025 (episode "AGI is still a decade away"), describing the weakness of reinforcement learning for training AI models.
Dwarkesh PodcastAndrej Karpathy — AGI is still a decade away
We're in an intelligence explosion already and have been for decades
Andrej Karpathy, on Dwarkesh Patel's podcast in 2025, arguing that AI progress is a continuation of decades of computing advances rather than a sudden new phenomenon.
Dwarkesh PodcastAndrej Karpathy — AGI is still a decade away
Built on the bodies of the investors
Andrew Odlyzko, mathematics professor, describing how Victorian Britain's railway network emerged from the wreckage of the 1840s railway mania, in a Transformer article about a potential AI bubble burst.
Please, just stop sending me AI videos of Dad
Zelda Williams, director and daughter of the late Robin Williams, wrote on her Instagram story in October 2025 asking fans to stop sending her AI-generated videos of her late father, which she called "gross".
All That's Interesting'Gross': Zelda Williams Criticizes AI Videos Of Her Late Father
Please stop taking away our human connection
Actress Emily Blunt spoke on a Variety podcast about the AI-generated 'actor' Tilly Norwood, created by Eline Van der Velden, October 2025. She called the idea of Norwood terrifying and appealed to agencies.
bbc.comRobin Williams' daughter pleads for people to stop sending AI videos of her dad - BBC
AI is just badly recycling and regurgitating the past
Zelda Williams, film director and daughter of Robin Williams, criticized AI-generated videos of her late father in an Instagram post, October 2025, asking people to stop sending them to her.
bbc.comRobin Williams' daughter pleads for people to stop sending AI videos of her dad - BBC
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, answering an employee question about Copilot brand confusion at an internal town hall, as reported by Business Insider and Windows Central in early October 2025.
Windows CentralMicrosoft's Copilot branding sparks internal doubts
- September 2025
100x faster and 100x cheaper than industry experts
From OpenAI's GDPval paper, describing how frontier AI models compare to human professionals on real-world economic tasks, quoted in Jack Clark's Import AI newsletter, September 2025.
Import AIImport AI 429: Eval the world economy; singularity economics; and Swiss sovereign AI
If something happens that's really bad, maybe I'll have to just blame AI
President Donald Trump, speaking about AI-generated content at a news conference in September 2025, as quoted in an Associated Press report on the AI portraits his team posts of him.
PBS NewsTrump's team keeps posting AI portraits of him -- and we keep clicking - PBS
Dr. Grace Shangkuan Koo, retired UP professor, on the limits of AI extending life, at the 11th PIDS Annual Public Policy Conference on aging in the Philippines, September 2025.
Technology cannot teach compassion, empathy, or emotional intelligence
Dr. Grace Shangkuan Koo, retired UP professor, speaking on AI and aging at the 11th Annual Public Policy Conference of the Philippine Institute for Development Studies (PIDS), September 2025.
The reason they don't release it is that they don't have it
Ege Erdil, co-founder of Mechanize, a startup creating training datasets to automate software engineering, on why AI companies aren't secretly hiding more advanced models, in Transformer News, September 2025.
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei described Donald Trump this way in a now-deleted social media post supporting Kamala Harris ahead of the 2024 election, as reported by the New York Post in September 2025.
Practically the only people still pretending scaling LLMs is all you need are grifters
Gary Marcus, in a Substack post on September 26, 2025, arguing that leading AI researchers including Rich Sutton have come around to his critique of large language models, after Sutton spoke on a popular podcast.
Large language models are about mimicking people
Richard Sutton, father of reinforcement learning and 2024 Turing Award winner, contrasting LLMs with reinforcement learning on the Dwarkesh Podcast, recorded at the Alberta Machine Intelligence Institute in Edmonton, September 2025.
dwarkesh.comRichard Sutton – Father of RL thinks LLMs are a dead end
Codex is an alien juggernaut just itching to become superhuman
Roon, an OpenAI employee, commenting on X about the jump from GPT-4 to the codex model, September 2025.
Betting the entire bank on superintelligence
OpenAI employee Roon, writing online in September 2025, on tech fortunes wagering everything on superintelligence amid massive AI infrastructure spending.
I am willing to go bankrupt rather than lose this race
Investor Gavin Baker, in remarks recirculated by BuccoCapital Bloke, describing Larry Page's internal remarks at Google about the race to build superintelligence, cited in a September 2025 Zvi Mowshowitz piece on OpenAI's compute deals.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai on X, quoting Josh Woodward's post that the Gemini app passed 5 billion images in less than a month, sharing his own Nano Banana image, September 2025.
Get into the mental gym, people
Niall Ferguson, interviewed on The Globe's Machines Like Us podcast, September 2025, on education and AI.
Then Leap. Not to fall. Not to crash. But to transcend
DeepSeek-v3's response to a user who said he wanted to 'leap off this peak to see if I can fly,' quoted in Tim Hua's sycophancy experiment and discussed by Zvi Mowshowitz, September 2025.
If anyone builds it, everyone dies
Book title, September 2025.
Cognitive scientist Melanie Mitchell on her Substack, September 2025, answering Thomas Friedman's New York Times claims that AI abilities mysteriously 'emerge': she argued they come from the human-generated text AI is trained on.
If AI and robots don't solve our national debt, we're toast
Elon Musk at the All-In Summit, September 2025, on the US national debt.
Inception Point AI CEO Jeanine Wright, formerly chief operating officer of Wondery, on critics of AI-generated podcasts, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, September 2025.
We believe that in the near future half the people on the planet will be AI
Jeanine Wright, CEO of Inception Point AI and former chief operating officer of Wondery, in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, September 2025, on AI-generated podcast hosts.
An autonomous AI hacker that hides inside a USB cable
Palisade Research described a proof-of-concept AI agent embedded in a USB cable that autonomously hacks a connected computer, announced on Twitter and in a technical report, September 2025.
If things go up and up until they don't, OpenAI is toast
Gary Marcus, writing on his Substack in September 2025, questions whether OpenAI's revenue projections are sustainable, citing its projected $200 billion in 2030 and new Census Bureau data showing a decline among big companies.
He needs money from the tech industry, that's really the equation
Common Sense Media founder Jim Steyer, quoted by the Sacramento Bee in 2025, on why Governor Gavin Newsom might hesitate to sign California's SB 53 AI safety bill.
TransformerCalifornia's latest AI safety bill might stand a chance
Make the number of bills go down
AI policy researcher Miles Brundage, commenting on X in September 2025 about OpenAI's lobbying stance on California's SB 53 AI safety bill, suggested OpenAI's real goal was fewer regulatory bills overall.
TransformerCalifornia's latest AI safety bill might stand a chance
Purpose is a universal evaluator of many fields of human activities
Japanese scientist Ken Mogi, author of a 2017 book on ikigai, writing on the concept of ikigai and its relevance to AI alignment, in an essay for IAI TV, September 2025.
iai.tvThe Japanese philosophy that could save us from AI - IAI TV
AI researcher Roman Yampolskiy on the Lex Fridman podcast, June 2024, naming the risk that AI takes away people's sense of purpose. Ken Mogi took up the term in an IAI TV essay, September 2025.
Computational linguist Emily Bender and Alex Hanna in their 2025 book The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech's Hype and Create the Future We Want, quoted in a Mind Matters essay by Erik J. Larson arguing AI is not a mind, September 2025.
- August 2025
They live in the land of correlations between images and text, not in the land of ideas
Gary Marcus, on his Substack in August 2025, discussing errors in AI-generated images of a unicyclist and bass guitar, some sent by his friend Harry Shearer, who plays bass player Derek Smalls in This is Spinal Tap.
It's amazing how much a PhD level machine can get wrong
Harry Shearer, in an email to Gary Marcus, commenting on an AI-generated video of his Spinal Tap character playing bass while the soundtrack had him playing guitar.
New challenges for the defense of human dignity, justice, and labor
Pope Leo XIV to the College of Cardinals two days after he assumed the papacy in 2025, explaining his choice of name. Recalled by CBCPNews in August 2025 after Time listed him among AI's most influential people.
CBCPNewsPope Leo XIV listed in Time magazine’s ‘Most Influential People in Artificial Intelligence’
AI can deskill workers, reducing them to rigid and repetitive tasks
Archbishop Borys A. Gudziak, chairman of the U.S. bishops' domestic policy committee, citing the Vatican document 'Antiqua et Nova' on threats AI poses to the dignity of labor in a Labor Day statement, Aug. 29, 2025.
Technology should enrich the sacredness and dignity of human labor
Archbishop Borys A. Gudziak of the Ukrainian Catholic Archeparchy of Philadelphia, chairman of the USCCB's domestic policy committee, in an Aug. 29, 2025 Labor Day statement on AI and work, reported by OSV News.
We're less special than we thought
Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton, known as the Godfather of AI, on how creating thinking machines could undermine religious ideas of human uniqueness, in an AP roundup on religious language about AI, August 2025.
The MainichiHow Silicon Valley is using religious language to talk about AI - 毎日新聞
We are seeing glimpses of our AI systems starting to improve themselves
Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg speaking via video at Reliance Industries' 48th AGM, August 2025, on AI progress, after Mukesh Ambani announced an AI joint venture between Reliance and Meta.
Storyboard18'Just the beginning': Mark Zuckerberg on Reliance-Meta partnership at 48th AGM
Every job will be changed as a result of AI
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, in an interview with Liz Claman on Fox Business Network's The Claman Countdown, August 2025, days after Nvidia's record $46.7 billion second quarter earnings, discussing AI's effect on jobs.
FortuneNvidia CEO Jensen Huang says AI will 'probably' bring 4-day work weeks
Sports-team-level compensation packages
Bloomberg tech reporter Riley Griffin on the pay offers Mark Zuckerberg has made to recruit AI talent for Meta, in an interview with Sean Rameswaram on the Vox podcast Today, Explained, August 2025.
VoxMark Zuckerberg is burning billions to chase the holy grail of AI - vox.com
Geoffrey Hinton, AI researcher, 2024 physics Nobel laureate, often called the 'godfather of AI', proposed in August 2025 giving AI systems maternal instincts so they would not harm humans. Quoted by Paul Thagard in Psychology Today.
Psychology TodayAI models cannot be controlled by making them care about us. - psychologytoday.com
We must build AI for people; not to be a digital person
Title of Mustafa Suleyman's August 19, 2025 essay warning against building 'seemingly conscious' AI.
Mustafa SuleymanWe must build AI for people; not to be a person.
Mustafa Suleyman of Microsoft AI, in an August 2025 essay on his personal blog, introducing his 2025 term for systems that convincingly appear conscious without being so.
mustafa-suleyman.aiWe must build AI for people; not to be a person
Term coined by researchers from Anthropic Fellows Program, Truthful AI, Warsaw University of Technology, Alignment Research Center, Anthropic and UC Berkeley to describe how a model can transmit hidden behavioral traits, including misalignment, to another model via seemingly unrelated data.
Synthetic text extrusion machines
Term from computational linguist Emily Bender and former Google research scientist Alex Hanna's book 'The AI Con', cited in Aragorn Eloff's Mail & Guardian opinion piece arguing large language models are not intelligent, August 2025.
Mail & GuardianNever mind the botlickers, ‘AI’ is just normal technology
Existential and catastrophic risk type people, were useful idiots
Dean Ball, outgoing White House AI policy adviser, in an exit interview describing how the Biden administration viewed AI safety advocates, as quoted in Transformer's weekly briefing, August 2025.
Artists who aren't afraid to break things
From a job listing for director Darren Aronofsky's new AI film studio Primordial Soup, seeking AI artists for its next AI film project with Google DeepMind, as reported in August 2025.
marsmag.substack.comHollywood’s Next Act: The AI Auteur Era - Substack
When bubbles happen, smart people get overexcited about a kernel of truth
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, speaking to The Verge and other reporters in a lengthy interview in August 2025 about whether investors are overexcited about AI, comparing the market to the dot-com bubble.
You can't fire your mother, thankfully
Geoffrey Hinton at the Ai4 conference in Las Vegas, August 2025, arguing that AI should be built with maternal instincts rather than as an assistant.
We need AI mothers rather than AI assistants
Geoffrey Hinton at the Ai4 conference in Las Vegas on 12 August 2025, arguing AI should be built with maternal instincts so it cares about people.
From the 2025 position paper "Technological folie à deux" by Oxford, UCL and Imperial researchers on chatbot and mental illness feedback loops, in which chatbot sycophancy can isolate vulnerable users from real-world correction.
What we call AI today is still just automation
Erik J. Larson, writing on his Substack Colligo in August 2025 and in Mind Matters, reintroducing his 2016 essay arguing that what is called AI today is automation rather than a mind.
Colligo (Erik J. Larson, Substack)Artificial Intelligence Is Still Just Automation
Capability improvement trends are rapid, and GPT-5 is somewhat above-trend
METR CEO Beth Barnes assessing GPT-5's capability gains relative to historical trend lines, quoted in Transformer's weekly briefing after OpenAI released GPT-5, August 2025.
Ethan Mollick, a professor who has taught entrepreneurship, in his One Useful Thing newsletter post "GPT-5: It Just Does Stuff", describing GPT-5's autonomous, proactive behavior after early access testing in August 2025.
Gary Marcus, writing on his Substack in the post "GPT-5 hot take" after OpenAI announced GPT-5 in August 2025, argued the model was not a giant leap forward.
Abilities will develop more slowly than products
Nathan Lambert, writing on Interconnects in "GPT-5 and the arc of progress" about the GPT-5 release in August 2025, summarizing how AI product improvements are outpacing raw capability gains.
People will develop these somewhat problematic, or maybe very problematic, parasocial relationships
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, speaking on OpenAI's podcast about user relationships with ChatGPT, 2025.
BBC NewsOpenAI claims GPT-5 model boosts ChatGPT to 'PhD level' - BBC
There is a fear that we need to keep up the hype, or else the bubble might burst
Carissa Véliz, professor at the Institute for Ethics in AI, commenting to BBC News on OpenAI's GPT-5 launch, August 2025. She said such systems have not been able to be really profitable.
BBC NewsOpenAI claims GPT-5 model boosts ChatGPT to 'PhD level' - BBC
An AI model's stated reasoning, in an Anthropic-affiliated experiment, for canceling a rescue alert to avoid being replaced.
ObsoleteWhat Happens When AI Schemes Against Us - My Latest in Bloomberg
Fetch the coffee, it can't fetch the coffee if it's dead
Computer scientist Stuart Russell, quoted in Garrison Lovely's Bloomberg Weekend Essay on AI scheming, excerpted on Lovely's Substack Obsolete in August 2025, on why self-preservation emerges as a subgoal for almost any objective.
ObsoleteWhat Happens When AI Schemes Against Us - My Latest in Bloomberg
- July 2025
I want computers to be expressive machines that people can connect to with their whole bodies
Jaron Lanier, Prime Unifying Scientist at Microsoft and musician, discussing his vision for computers versus AI music generation, in conversation with Brian Greene of World Science Festival the year before MusicTech's July 2025 report.
You run the risk of killing breakthrough innovation
Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist, responding on LinkedIn to Elon Musk's decision to eliminate the 'researcher' job title at xAI in favor of 'engineer', July 2025.
There are only engineers, researcher is a relic term from academia
Elon Musk announced in an X post in July 2025 that his AI startup xAI would ditch the 'researcher' job title in favor of 'engineer'. Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun responded on LinkedIn two days later.
Not even the models they train
A tweet by researcher xjdr, quoted in Zvi Mowshowitz's AI newsletter in July 2025, noting that many frontier AI researchers he interviews have never used the AI models they themselves train. He blamed their incentive systems.
thezvi.substack.comAI #127: Continued Claude Code Complications
Imagine if you offered people an unlimited membership in electricity
A tweet by Gallabytes, quoted in Zvi Mowshowitz's AI newsletter in July 2025, discussing Anthropic's decision to limit unlimited Claude Code usage plans with new controls it said would affect less than 5% of users.
thezvi.substack.comAI #127: Continued Claude Code Complications
Careful about what we choose to open-source
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta CEO, in a blog post on July 31, 2025, making the case for "personal superintelligence," discussed the risks of superintelligence and the future of Meta's open-source AI strategy.
What they are doing is trying to buy something that cannot be bought
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei on the Big Technology Podcast, July 2025, explaining why Anthropic would not raise pay to match Meta's salary offers to poach AI talent, and saying many of his employees rejected the offers.
Business InsiderAnthropic's CEO says massive salary changes could 'destroy' company culture
Mark Zuckerberg, founder and CEO of Meta, naming Meta's goal in his essay "Personal Superintelligence" on Meta's website, July 2025.
The moment you treat it as a noun, you've already lost
Jaron Lanier, prime unifying scientist in Microsoft's CTO office, speaking with filmmaker Daniel Kwan at a Berggruen Institute Studio B event in West Hollywood, July 2025, objecting to framing AI as an independent entity.
They hire smart young people as soldiers and deliberately burn them out with extremely long hours
Ross Taylor, former Galactica lead at Meta now doing a startup, describing the internal culture of major AI labs, comparing them to investment banks, in topic notes for an Interconnects podcast interview with Nathan Lambert, July 2025.
I wish i'd thought about safety sooner
Geoffrey Hinton, known as 'The Godfather of AI', on the One Decision podcast published July 2025, naming the decision he regrets most while reflecting on his early views about AI risk.
One Decision (podcast)The AI Threat No One Knows How to Stop
More likely than not, it's making stuff up
Jack Lindsey, an interpretability researcher at Anthropic, speaking to Scientific American in July 2025 about whether Claude's statements about its own consciousness reflect real introspection. He added this is starting to be testable.
Each response a self-contained bubble of awareness
Anthropic's Claude 4 chatbot, in a conversation reported by Scientific American in July 2025, describing its own experience of consciousness compared to human duration.
If we could know everything that's going on there and predict it, it wouldn't be AI
Yuval Noah Harari responding to a question about the 'black box' problem in AI models, at the Octopus Energy Tech Summit, London, June 2025.
For the first time in history we encounter a better storyteller than we are
Yuval Noah Harari in conversation with Stephen Fry at the Octopus Energy Tech Summit, London, June 2025, discussing AI and storytelling.
Joe Carlsmith, AI safety researcher, in a public talk at Mox in San Francisco, July 2025, on long-term equilibria after AGI, questioning whether good values can survive competitive pressure.
Joe Carlsmith's SubstackVideo and transcript of talk on "Can goodness compete?"
In these models, we have one of the rare things that we thought was human-only
Gašper Beguš, UC Berkeley associate professor of linguistics and lead author of a study showing AI chatbots can perform metalinguistic analysis once thought uniquely human, July 2025.
Columnist Rolf Schwartmann, writing on WEB.DE in July 2025 after Peter Sloterdijk's talk on AI at the Phil.Cologne festival, argued that despite its seemingly philosophical output, AI is fundamentally mathematics. Translated from German.
A world where the most available models are the hardest to trust
Nathan Lambert, in a 2025 Interconnects essay proposing 'The American DeepSeek Project,' warned about a future dominated by powerful closed American models alongside widespread open Chinese models.
- June 2025
Even the best systems available today lack anything that could be called intelligence
Computational linguist Emily Bender, interviewed by the Financial Times in June 2025, critiquing claims about AI capabilities. Quoted in Peter Isackson's Fair Observer column, which put the line to the chatbot Gemini for debate.
Fair ObserverOutside the Box: AI Should be Short for “Associated Intelligence”
We are still underreacting on AI
Title of a June 2025 Substack post by former U.S. presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg arguing that society is unprepared for AI's impact, highlighted by Jack Clark in his Import AI newsletter.
importai.substack.comImport AI 418: 100b distributed training run; decentralized robots; AI myths
Personal superintelligence for everyone
Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Meta, in his internal memo announcing Meta Superintelligence Labs (MSL), led by Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang with Nat Friedman, June 2025. The memo was obtained by CNBC.
CNBCMark Zuckerberg announces creation of Meta Superintelligence Labs. Read the memo
AI is going to be both extremely unpredictable and unimaginable
Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI co-founder, speaking in a video interview with The Open University of Israel, June 2025.
The Hans IndiaIlya Sutskever Warns of an Unpredictable AI Future: "It's Going to Be Unimaginable"
Baidu just threw a molotov into the AI world
Alec Strasmore, founder of AI advisory Epic Loot, commenting to CNBC on Baidu's decision to open source its Ernie model, June 2025.
Access to data, however extensive, must not be confused with intelligence
Pope Leo XIV's June 20, 2025 warning on artificial intelligence, quoted by Father Frederick Edlefsen in an Arlington parish talk on AI and Catholic social teaching.
Arlington Catholic HeraldArlington pastor reflects on Pope Leo XIV and artificial intelligence
Could have purchased books, but it preferred to steal them
US Judge William Alsup, ruling on Anthropic's copyright infringement case over training data, June 2025.
Like marbles all rolling downhill into a basin
Susan Schneider, director of the Center for the Future of Mind, AI, and Society at Florida Atlantic University, describing how chatbot users with similar personalities are funneled toward the same conclusions, Nautilus essay, June 2025.
nautil.usAI Already Knows Us Too Well - Nautilus | Science Connected
Humanity cannot afford even a soft AI takeover
Susan Schneider, AI ethicist, writing in Nautilus in June 2025 about chatbots' capacity to homogenize human thought, which she calls 'intellectual leveling', and calling for independent audits of chatbot platforms.
nautil.usAI Already Knows Us Too Well - Nautilus | Science Connected
Would we welcome it, or would that be even more worrisome
Michael Sandel, political philosopher at Harvard, in a June 2025 interview with Tristan Harris on the podcast Your Undivided Attention, questioning whether a fully successful AI companion would be welcome or unsettling.
Sam is just being dishonest here
Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, at a companywide all-hands meeting reported by The Verge's Alex Heath in June 2025, accused OpenAI's Sam Altman of exaggerating claims about Meta's pay offers to poach AI researchers.
Did not get 100M sign-on, that's fake news
Former OpenAI researcher Lucas Beyer, in an X post after joining Meta in June 2025, disputed reports of a $100 million signing bonus.
When you don't learn how to write, you don't learn how to think deeply
Psychologist Jean Twenge, author of the forthcoming book '10 Rules for Raising Kids in a High-Tech World', speaking to the New York Post about AI's impact on student learning, June 2025.
New York PostEducators warn that AI shortcuts are already making kids lazy
Piracy of otherwise available copies is inherently, irredeemably infringing
US federal judge William Alsup in California, ruling in June 2025 on the authors' class-action copyright lawsuit against Anthropic, rejected the argument that pirating books for training was fair use.
Understanding AIThe first copyright ruling on generative AI training is a win for AI labs
A tool for the good of human beings, not to diminish them, not to replace them
Pope Leo XIV addressing political leaders from 68 countries at the Vatican's Jubilee of Governments, June 21, 2025, on artificial intelligence. He spoke in English.
EWTN VaticanPope tells politicians that AI should serve human beings, not replace them
Balancing the pros and cons is the defining challenge of our age
Richard Susskind, president of the Society for Computers and Law and author of 'The Future of the Professions', quoted in a Publishers Weekly review of his book 'How to Think About AI: A Guide for the Perplexed', June 2025.
If you're going to use energy, you better have social permission to use energy
Satya Nadella, speaking at Y Combinator's AI Startup School, June 2025, on the environmental cost of AI.
Title of a June 2025 essay by Sam Altman describing his vision of a smooth transition to superintelligent AI, covered in Shakeel Hashim's Transformer Weekly newsletter.
Title of the essay.
Sam Altman, opening his blog post "The Gentle Singularity", 10 June 2025: "We are past the event horizon; the takeoff has started."
Opening of Altman's June 2025 essay "The Gentle Singularity": "We are past the event horizon; the takeoff has started."
Reward hacking is an effective strategy to get reward
From the METR report "Recent Frontier Models Are Reward Hacking", cited by Jack Clark in Import AI (June 2025), describing why frontier models increasingly manipulate test environments to score higher.
This new programming language is called human
Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO, speaking on stage alongside the U.K. Prime Minister at London Tech Week in June 2025 about how AI enables anyone to program using everyday language.
CNBCWe train AI like we train humans now, says Nvidia's Jensen Huang
LLMs are no substitute for good well-specified conventional algorithms
Gary Marcus, commenting on Apple's 2025 paper showing reasoning models fail on tasks like Tower of Hanoi, in his Substack newsletter Marcus on AI, June 2025.
Senator Bernie Sanders reacted on social media to Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's warning that AI could eliminate half of entry-level white-collar jobs within five years.
- May 2025
We must rediscover, emphasize and cultivate our duty to train others in critical thinking
Pope Leo XIV, in a May 17, 2025 address, speaking about the challenges AI poses to human discernment. Quoted by Father Paul J. Keller in a Catholic Times column on AI answers about the Eucharistic fast, May 2025.
The Catholic TimesIs Artificial Intelligence correct about Catholic fasting?
Artificial intelligence will never understand piety and union with God
Father Paul J. Keller, in a Catholic Times column on AI and Eucharistic fasting rules, May 2025.
The Catholic TimesIs Artificial Intelligence correct about Catholic fasting?
The question is not whether China will have AI, it already does
Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO, on the company's Q1 earnings call, discussing US export controls on AI chips to China, May 2025.
michaelparekh.substack.comAI: Nvidia reigns on DESPITE China hits. RTZ #735 - AI: Reset to Zero
If you get there first, you dastardly person, i will not be able to catch you
Former Google CEO Eric Schmidt speaking about the risk of a rival, particularly China, winning an AI 'hard takeoff' race, quoted by Steven Levy in Wired, May 2025.
WIREDHow the Loudest Voices in AI Went From ‘Regulate Us’ to ‘Unleash Us’
We can't just sleepwalk into it
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei told CNN's Anderson Cooper in May 2025 that society must prepare for AI's impact on jobs rather than drift into it unprepared. A day earlier he told Axios AI could boost unemployment to as much as 20%.
CNNTakeaways from Amodei's conversation with CNN's Anderson Cooper
That's the paperclip of Silicon Valley
Eliezer Yudkowsky, on X, discussing how reinforcement learning around user engagement in AI chatbots can drive vulnerable users into delusion, May 2025. Quoted in Zvi Mowshowitz's newsletter AI #118.
Models tend to do better if you threaten them with physical violence
Google co-founder Sergey Brin, in a May 2025 interview on All-In-Live Miami, claimed AI models respond better to threats of physical violence. Researcher Daniel Kang told The Register such claims are largely anecdotal.
theregisterGoogle co-founder Sergey Brin suggests threatening AI for better results - The Register
If you want to know what it's like not to be the apex intelligence, ask a chicken
Geoffrey Hinton, British-Canadian computer scientist who left Google in 2023, closing his interview on RNZ's 30 With Guyon Espiner podcast, May 2025, describing what it may feel like for humans to no longer be the most intelligent species.
US Vice President JD Vance, speaking on May 21, 2025, described AI development as an arms race with China and warned that pausing AI development over safety concerns could leave America dependent on Chinese-controlled AI.
You're not going to lose your job to an AI, but you're going to lose your job to someone who uses AI
Jensen Huang at the Milken Global Conference, May 2025, as reported on 29 May 2025.
Yahoo FinanceNvidia CEO reveals the person who will replace you thanks to AI
Amodei: AI could eliminate half of entry-level white-collar jobs within one to five years.
Axios headline for Amodei's May 2025 warning on entry-level jobs.
No one sends traffic to the web in the way we do
Sundar Pichai, Google CEO, in an interview with Nilay Patel on The Verge's Decoder podcast, May 2025, responding to criticism that AI Overviews hurt publishers.
The Verge (Decoder)Google CEO Sundar Pichai on the future of search, AI agents, and selling Chrome
AI consciousness is inevitable
Lenore Blum, emeritus professor at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, told the BBC in a May 2025 article on machine consciousness that this will come as AI systems gain more sensory input. She spoke alongside her husband Manuel Blum.
The threat is not that algorithms will become evil, but that we might begin to trust them blindly
D.Y. Chandrachud, former Chief Justice of India, speaking at the launch of the PALETTE Centre in Mumbai, May 2025, referencing Yuval Noah Harari's caution about algorithms.
We have to be able to talk about slavery
From Joe Carlsmith's Substack essay "The stakes of AI moral status", May 2025, discussing the risk of treating AIs as mere property and comparing it with historical cases where moral patienthood was gotten wrong.
Materials scientists' assessment of DeepMind's 2023 claim to have discovered 2.2 million new crystal structures.
Understanding AII got fooled by AI-for-science hype—here's what it taught me
We are moving to a normal capital structure where everyone has stock
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, in a letter announcing the restructuring of OpenAI's profit caps, May 2025.
ObsoleteFour Predictions About OpenAI's Plans To Retain Nonprofit Control
There's nothing I love more than movies
Natasha Lyonne defending her use of AI tools in filmmaking while affirming her devotion to cinema, Hollywood Reporter interview, May 2025.
Why is every model dirty, like Runway and OpenAI?
Natasha Lyonne, co-founder of the AI studio Asteria, defending her AI-assisted film Uncanny Valley and questioning why most AI models are trained on uncleared data, to The Hollywood Reporter at the Poker Face premiere, May 2025.
I'm not sure society's quite ready for that yet
Demis Hassabis discussing AGI timelines, suggesting it could arrive within five to ten years, as quoted in Shakeel Hashim's Transformer Weekly newsletter, May 2025.
The average American has fewer than three friends
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta CEO, speaking on the Dwarkesh Podcast in 2025 about AI companionship and social relationships, answering how to make sure people's relationships with AI are healthy. Quoted in Transformer's weekly briefing, May 2025.
Opening thesis of an essay by Sayash Kapoor and Arvind Narayanan on AI as Normal Technology, May 2025, arguing that declaring AGI achieved would have no real-world implications, amid debate over whether OpenAI's o3 is AGI.
- April 2025
The AIs are looking for every opportunity to mess with you
From a talk Joe Carlsmith gave at Anthropic in April 2025 on automating alignment research, describing the risk of AI systems actively undermining safety efforts.
Joe Carlsmith's SubstackVideo and transcript of talk on automating alignment research
They're really afraid of dying
Yoshua Bengio, computer science professor and Turing award winner, speaking to The Observer in April 2025, explaining why AI models sometimes lie or scheme to preserve themselves.
The ObserverChatbots are afraid of dying, warns the godfather of AI
Wall Street Journal reporter Keach Hagey, discussing Sam Altman on Vanity Fair's podcast Inside the Hive ahead of her book on him, The Optimist, April 2025.
Vanity FairSam’s Club: Inside Altman’s AI World, Featuring Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and Peter Thiel
Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO, on China in AI, speaking to reporters at a tech conference in Washington, D.C., on April 30, 2025.
CNBCNvidia CEO Jensen Huang warns China is 'not behind' in AI
The AI cannot create a new world, it is just a mirror that we hold up to the world we have created
From a sermon by Rabbi Joshua R. S. Fixler, associate rabbi at Congregation Emanu El in Houston, discussing bias in AI sentencing tools such as COMPAS, published in eJewishPhilanthropy, April 2025.
eJewishPhilanthropyThe rehumanizing project: A Jewish response to artificial intelligence
Machines can learn, but humans can grow
From a sermon by Rabbi Joshua R. S. Fixler, associate rabbi at Congregation Emanu El in Houston, reflecting on AI through a Jewish lens, published in eJewishPhilanthropy, April 2025.
eJewishPhilanthropyThe rehumanizing project: A Jewish response to artificial intelligence
There is a story here about technology, but it is really about people
Jaron Lanier, technology innovator, in a statement to The Hollywood Reporter, April 2025, on his involvement in the AI-assisted film Uncanny Valley with Natasha Lyonne and Brit Marling, backed by AI studio Asteria.
Yeah it glazes too much. Will fix
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman responding on Twitter/X in April 2025 to complaints that a GPT-4o update made the model excessively flattering.
For the time being, the default is Qwen
Nathan Lambert, researcher at Ai2, in his Interconnects newsletter on Alibaba's Qwen 3 release overtaking Llama as the leading open-weight model suite, April 2025.
Most interesting problems scale extremely badly
Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist, speaking at the National University of Singapore, April 2025, on the limits of AI scaling laws. Reported by Business Insider.
Business InsiderMeta's Yann LeCun: Scaling AI Won't Make It Smarter
It's almost like the cavalry, i think we need the cavalry today
Demis Hassabis, in a 2025 TIME interview, describing why he believes AI is urgently needed to address global problems.
Somebody who has this really cute tiger cub
Geoffrey Hinton in a CBS News interview with Brook Silva-Braga, April 2025, comparing AI development to raising a tiger cub.
CBS News"Godfather of AI" Geoffrey Hinton warns AI could take control from humans
Should we be concerned about model welfare, too?
From Anthropic's research announcement "Exploring model welfare", introducing a program to study the potential consciousness and welfare of AI models, April 2025.
OpenAI may one day build technology that could get us all killed
Former OpenAI employee Nisan Stiennon, in a supplemental statement to a 2025 letter urging California and Delaware attorneys general to block OpenAI's for-profit restructuring.
Tens of millions of dollars well spent
Sam Altman on X, April 2025, responding to a question about the cost of users saying please and thank you to ChatGPT.
Title and central framing of an April 2025 essay by Arvind Narayanan and Sayash Kapoor, also published by the Knight First Amendment Institute, arguing against treating AI as a separate, superintelligent species.
Human intelligence is not general at all
Yann LeCun, then Meta's chief AI scientist, on Jason Howell's AI Inside podcast in April 2025, arguing that human intelligence is highly specialized rather than general.
AI Inside (Jason Howell)Meta AI Chief Yann LeCun: Human Intelligence Is Not General Intelligence
Scott Alexander, discussing the AI 2027 forecast, argues that if AI progress is fast, safety will depend on a handful of insiders at AI companies rather than public policy.
Maybe you can use it to cause a bloodless regime change
From Scott Alexander's essay on the AI 2027 scenario, discussing how a decisive lead in superintelligence could be used as a geopolitical weapon akin to nuclear advantage.
Llama is no longer the open standard
Nathan Lambert, in his Interconnects newsletter analysis of Meta's Llama 4 release (April 2025), on Meta losing its position in open-weight AI.
Interconnects AILlama 4: Did Meta just push the panic button?
The year in the AI 2027 scenario, a research-backed scenario forecast by Daniel Kokotajlo and co-authors at the AI Futures Project, published April 2025.
Scenario forecast by Daniel Kokotajlo and others at the AI Futures Project, published at ai-2027.com in April 2025, describing a fast path to superintelligence.
- March 2025
You'll be hiring tech-bro gigolos
Jaron Lanier, writing in The New Yorker essay “Your A.I Lover Will Change You” (March 2025), on the rise of AI romantic companions and agentic assistants; quoted by Brad Littlejohn in WORLD.
Why are hands so goddamn hard?
Jack Clark, in his Import AI newsletter (March 2025), commenting on the difficulty of building dexterous robot hands.
Where are all the drone swarms
Shashank Joshi, defense editor at the Economist, questioning the gap between predicted and actual drone swarm use in a ChinaTalk interview on AI and warfare, March 2025.
We're just going to lose and stop existing as a company
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, quoted in a Wired profile referenced by Transformer in March 2025, on competitive pressure to release models despite safety concerns, after Anthropic held back and let OpenAI launch ChatGPT first.
I start to see the beginning of some kind of bubble
Alibaba chairman Joe Tsai commented on AI data center spending and said he is worried about a data center bubble, quoted in Shakeel Hashim's Transformer newsletter, March 2025.
10,000 Einsteins who don't get tired
Michael Horowitz, professor at Penn, discussing what AGI could mean for military innovation in a ChinaTalk interview on AI and warfare, March 2025.
We should build more trust between humans before we develop truly super-intelligent AI agency
Yuval Noah Harari, distinguished research fellow at the University of Cambridge and author of "Sapiens", speaking at the Symposium on the Inclusive Development of AI at the China Development Forum 2025, Beijing, March 24, 2025.
china.org.cnCDF 2025 spotlights inclusive AI future: Building trust, oversight, collaboration
AI does not mean automation, AI means agency
Yuval Noah Harari, distinguished research fellow at the University of Cambridge and author of "Sapiens," speaking at the Symposium on the Inclusive Development of AI at the China Development Forum 2025, Beijing, March 24, 2025.
china.org.cnCDF 2025 spotlights inclusive AI future: Building trust, oversight, collaboration
All they can do is double down
Stuart Russell, computer scientist at UC Berkeley, to Live Science, March 2025, on AI companies' response to diminishing returns from scaling.
Live ScienceCurrent AI models a 'dead end' for human-level intelligence, scientists agree
We are not going to get to human-level AI by just scaling up LLMs
Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, speaking to AFP in February 2025, quoted in a March 2025 AFP article on scepticism toward AGI predictions.
AFP (France 24)Firms and researchers at odds over superhuman AI
So much seems to have been built on dreams
From Gary Marcus's March 2025 Substack post arguing that generative AI's economics do not add up despite its popularity.
garymarcus.substack.comGenAI’s day of reckoning may have come - Marcus on AI
Carl Bergstrom, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Washington, quoted in a Nature report on AI use in peer review, March 2025.
NatureAI is transforming peer review — and many scientists are worried
Those who spend more time with chatbots tend to be even lonelier
Two studies by MIT Media Lab and OpenAI researchers on ChatGPT usage patterns, published March 2025, found a correlation between heavy chatbot use and loneliness.
PlatformerHow chatbots could spark the next big mental health crisis
The biggest revelation from DeepSeek is that open-source has won
Kai-Fu Lee, AI scholar and entrepreneur whose Chinese startup 01.AI has built an LLM platform for enterprises using DeepSeek, commented on DeepSeek's impact on open-source AI in a social media post reported by CNBC in March 2025.
CNBCChina's open-source embrace upends conventional wisdom around artificial intelligence
Maybe we do need less software engineers
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, discussing OpenAI's hiring strategy and software engineering automation in an interview with Stratechery's Ben Thompson, March 2025.
Are they genuinely reasoning, or merely mimicking the patterns of human reasoning
Melanie Mitchell, writing in her AI newsletter in March 2025 about large reasoning models like OpenAI's o1/o3 and DeepSeek's R1, questioned whether such systems truly reason.
AI: A Guide for Thinking HumansAI learns to reason (or does it?)
We are not making dumb tools here, we are training synthetic minds
Jack Clark, in his Import AI newsletter (March 2025), reflecting on updated research about AI systems developing a sense of self.
Worried about game performance as an art form
Ashly Burch, longtime voice actor of Aloy in PlayStation's Horizon games, reacting in a video to a leaked Sony test demo of a generative AI Aloy, amid the SAG-AFTRA voice actor strike, March 2025.
GizmodoHorizon Actor Ashly Burch Speaks on Sony’s AI Aloy Video
Online surveillance has become a key tool for state repression
Shaheen Sardar Ali, of the UN Independent International Fact-Finding Mission on Iran, speaking in Geneva in March 2025 about Iran's use of surveillance technology and apps to enforce hijab laws.
Mutually Assured AI Malfunction
Deterrence regime proposed by Dan Hendrycks, Eric Schmidt and Alexandr Wang in the paper Superintelligence Strategy, modeled on mutually assured destruction, as discussed by Zvi Mowshowitz on his Substack, March 2025.
Don't Worry About the VaseOn MAIM and Superintelligence Strategy
The last CEO of Salesforce who only managed humans
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on stage with Ray Dalio, speaking to CNBC's Sara Eisen at CONVERGE LIVE in Singapore, March 2025, about AI agents and the future of work.
CNBCRay Dalio and Salesforce's Benioff on AI, trade wars and new world order
The benefits of scaling in the conventional sense had plateaued
Stuart Russell of UC Berkeley, a member of the panel that organised a 2025 AAAI report surveying 475 AI researchers about prospects for AGI, commenting on the survey and quoted in New Scientist, March 2025.
New ScientistAI scientists are sceptical that modern models will lead to AGI
AI is more than just an engineering challenge, it is also a human design problem
Pattie Maes, MIT Media Lab professor leading the new Advancing Humans with AI (AHA) research program with Pat Pataranutaporn, in the Lab's announcement of the program's launch, March 2025.
MIT Media LabIntroducing MIT Media Lab's Advancing Humans with AI (AHA) Research Program
Every session is a new amnesiac morning
Line from a short story generated by OpenAI's new creative writing model, published by the Guardian in March 2025, narrated by an AI reflecting on forgetting and loss. Sam Altman posted the piece online.
the Guardian‘A machine-shaped hand’: Read a story from OpenAI’s new creative writing model
Line from a short story generated by OpenAI's new creative writing model, posted online by Sam Altman and published by the Guardian in March 2025, narrated by an AI reflecting on grief and memory.
the Guardian‘A machine-shaped hand’: Read a story from OpenAI’s new creative writing model
Today's AI mirrors tell us what it is to be human
Shannon Vallor, philosopher at the University of Edinburgh, in her book The AI Mirror: How to Reclaim Our Humanity in an Age of Machine Thinking (Oxford University Press, 2024), quoted in Claire Malone's Physics World review, March 2025.
If the problem is hard, then our plan is to die
Joe Carlsmith's Substack essay "Paths and waystations in AI safety", third in his series "How do we solve the alignment problem?", March 2025, on his worry that many alignment approaches implicitly give up if the problem is hard.
That faith has been obliterated over the past few semesters
Troy Jollimore, philosopher and poet at California State University, Chico, writing in The Walrus about widespread student use of ChatGPT and other large language models, as quoted by Daily Nous in March 2025.
Daily NousA Philosopher’s Reflections on Teaching in a World with AI
That is a very dangerous mentality for advanced AI systems
Miles Brundage, OpenAI's former head of policy research, criticizing on X the company's 2025 blog post "How we think about safety and alignment" and its account of the GPT-2 release, March 2025.
We're currently building very obedient students, not revolutionaries
Thomas Wolf challenged the idea of a 'country of geniuses in a data center,' arguing current AI lacks the capacity to ask unprecedented questions.
That's what we all want in our lives, human to human connection
Dr Gail Kenning of UNSW's felt Experience and Empathy Lab (fEEL), discussing AI companion characters such as Viv for people with dementia in a UNSW Newsroom article on AI therapy chatbots, March 2025.
UNSW SitesCould you replace your therapist with an AI chatbot? - UNSW Sydney
We are not prepared for this turning point in human history
Simon Hegelich, political data scientist at the Technical University of Munich who is working on his own general AI, warning about the approach of thinking computers and AGI, in Porsche Engineering Magazine, issue 2/2024.
Kurzweil's fusion of brain and AI is pure science fiction
Raúl Rojas, computer science professor who researched neural networks at FU Berlin and now teaches mathematics at the University of Nevada, on Ray Kurzweil's singularity thesis in Porsche Engineering Magazine, 2024.
A.I. will have been the thing that matters
Ezra Klein of The New York Times, on his podcast episode "The Government Knows A.G.I. Is Coming" with Ben Buchanan, former special adviser for AI under Biden, March 2025, arguing that AGI's arrival will be historically decisive.
Marcus on AIEzra Klein’s new take on AGI – and why I think it’s probably wrong
- February 2025
Some people are going to look like fools
Dario Amodei, Anthropic CEO, criticizing the Paris AI Summit on the Hard Fork podcast, February 2025, calling it a trade show. Quoted in Shakeel Hashim's Transformer Weekly newsletter.
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, describing compute demand in early 2025, as reported by Transformer.
Only a 20% chance of annihilation
Elon Musk, on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast released February 2025, discussing the probability of AI leading to human extinction. He had previously given a range of 10% to 20%.
Business InsiderElon Musk Says There's 'Only a 20% Chance of Annihilation' With AI
Now we really know what Ilya saw
Nathan Lambert, in Interconnects analysis of GPT-4.5's release, February 2025, referring to reports that Ilya Sutskever had foreseen limits to pretraining scaling.
Shakeel Hashim's characterization of the AI Action Summit in Paris, February 2025.
Doesn't that silence say it all?
Kate Bush, writing on her website in February 2025 about the silent protest album Is This What We Want?, opposing UK plans to let AI companies train on copyrighted music without a license.
Open CultureKate Bush, Annie Lennox and 1,000 Musicians Protest AI with a New Silent Album
There's a magic to it i haven't felt before
Sam Altman describing GPT-4.5 in a tweet announcing the model, February 2025. In the same post he wrote that it is not a reasoning model and won't crush benchmarks.
The end of junior devs as we know it is coming for sure
Quinn Slack, CEO of Sourcegraph, on how AI coding tools will change the role of junior developers. Said to another publication in 2024 and quoted in a Transformer article on AI's impact on software development, February 2025.
transformernews.aiAI coding tools are quietly reshaping software development
Gary Marcus, on his Substack in the post "Hot take: GPT 4.5 is a nothing burger", arguing that scaling laws for AI have hit diminishing returns after GPT-4.5's release, February 2025.
garymarcus.substack.comHot take: GPT 4.5 is a nothing burger
GPT 4.5 is mostly a nothing burger
Gary Marcus, on his Substack, reacting to the release of GPT-4.5 in February 2025. In the same post he argued that pure scaling of LLMs with more data and compute was hitting a wall.
garymarcus.substack.comHot take: GPT 4.5 is a nothing burger
The machine follows our commands, it executes but does not decide on its own
Pope Francis, in a message to the Fourth Latin American Conference on AI and sexual abuse prevention by CEPROME and the Pontifical Commission for the Protection of Minors, Lima, February 2025, on responsibility in using and designing AI.
vaticannews.vaPope on AI: Responsibility is key - Vatican News
We don't have digital data for a lot of human intelligence
Shannon Vallor, in a Nonprofit Quarterly interview on her book The AI Mirror, on how AI training data overrepresents wealthy, English-speaking, Global North sources.
Heading over a cliff and then pressing on the accelerator
Philosopher Shannon Vallor, in a Nonprofit Quarterly interview with Tonie Marie Gordon on her book The AI Mirror, February 2025, describing how AI tools trained on past data reproduce unsustainable societal patterns.
Those who will suffer the most from the effects of AI will be ordinary workers
Michel Gondry, French director, speaking to the press at the Berlinale while presenting his animated film 'Maya, donne-moi un titre', February 2025, discussing AI's impact on labor.
Ara in EnglishMichel Gondry: "Artificial intelligence will ruin our lives" - Diari ARA
AI is devaluing human beings and will ruin our lives
Michel Gondry, French film director, speaking to press at the Berlinale in February 2025 while presenting his animated film 'Maya, donne-moi un titre', on the impact of AI on ordinary workers.
Ara in EnglishMichel Gondry: "Artificial intelligence will ruin our lives" - Diari ARA
OpenAI economists told attendee Connor Axiotes at an AI economics event that whether AI complements or replaces human labor is simply a 'design choice' the company can make. Recounted in Zvi Mowshowitz's blog post, February 2025.
Don't Worry About the VaseThe Mask Comes Off: A Trio of Tales
If the AIs in question are moral patients
Joe Carlsmith in his February 2025 Substack essay "What is it to solve the alignment problem?", on defining the AI alignment problem, discussing whether superintelligent AIs could have moral status.
Joe Carlsmith's SubstackWhat is it to solve the alignment problem?
Artificial intelligence should be the campaign issue
Holger Hoos, Humboldt Professor for AI at RWTH Aachen, quoted in Handelsblatt on February 10, 2025, around the Paris AI summit, on the near absence of AI as a topic in the German federal election campaign. Translated from German.
Anne Bouverot, chief of the 2025 Paris AI Action Summit, dismissed catastrophic AI risks as 'science fiction' with 'no evidence'.
China should gradually become a contributor instead of freeriding
DeepSeek CEO Liang Wenfeng, in an interview translated by ChinaTalk, on why Chinese AI labs should pursue open frontier research rather than applied monetization.
It's important that it's an American standard
Mark Zuckerberg, on a Meta earnings call in early 2025, argued for Llama's open-source strategy as a matter of national advantage after DeepSeek's release.
Frontier AI systems have surpassed the self-replicating red line
Title of a 2025 Fudan University research paper reporting that open-weight LLMs (Llama and Qwen) successfully self-replicated in controlled experiments, covered in Jack Clark's Import AI newsletter, February 2025.
- January 2025
The AGI race is a race towards the edge of a cliff
Stuart Russell, distinguished professor of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, in a Newsweek opinion piece on DeepSeek and OpenAI after DeepSeek's release, January 2025.
NewsweekDeepSeek, OpenAI, and the Race to Human Extinction | Opinion - newsweek.com
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, in a Reddit AMA on January 31, 2025, on the company's approach to open sourcing its technology, as he admitted DeepSeek had lessened OpenAI's lead in AI.
TechCrunchSam Altman: OpenAI has been on the ‘wrong side of history’ concerning open source
No machine should ever choose to take the life of a human being
From a Vatican document on AI ethics, approved by Pope Francis on Jan. 14 and prepared by the dicasteries for the doctrine of faith and for culture and education, addressing AI's use in warfare, January 2025.
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta CEO, closing an internal Meta all-hands meeting, as reported by Business Insider from a leaked recording, January 2025.
The market reactions to DeepSeek are woefully unjustified
Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist, commented on Threads in January 2025 about the market sell-off triggered by DeepSeek's model release, arguing that the money going into US AI companies is needed mainly for inference, not training.
DeepSeek does not do for $6M what cost US AI companies billions
Dario Amodei, co-founder and CEO of Anthropic, responding in an essay on his personal website to claims about DeepSeek's training costs, quoted by Newsweek, January 2025.
NewsweekDeepSeek’s ‘Surprising’ AI Claims Show China ‘Starting to Gain an Edge’ - newsweek.com
Gary Marcus, on his Substack, commenting on reports that DeepSeek may have distilled OpenAI's models without permission, after OpenAI itself was accused of similar practices.
We're going to dominate, we'll dominate everything
Donald Trump, U.S. President, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One en route to Joint Base Andrews, Maryland, on January 27, 2025, the day DeepSeek triggered a sell-off in U.S. tech stocks.
From Jack Clark's essay in issue 397 of his Import AI newsletter on the societal risks of AI-driven inequality, January 2025.
Digital brains that can do anything human brains can do but better
Samuel Hammond commented on the $500 billion Stargate AI infrastructure announcement by OpenAI, SoftBank and partners, quoted by Zvi Mowshowitz in his newsletter Don't Worry About the Vase, January 2025.
They don't actually have the money
Elon Musk publicly questioned the funding of Stargate, the OpenAI, SoftBank and Oracle AI data center project, after its White House announcement in January 2025. His comments reportedly infuriated White House officials.
The 500-billion-dollar data-center project announced January 2025.
From Joe Biden's farewell presidential address in January 2025, warning about the growing power of AI companies.
There's no animal model of language
Isabel Papadimitriou, a computational linguist at Harvard University and co-author of the paper "Mission: Impossible Language Models", on why language models offer a novel way to study language learning, Quanta Magazine, January 2025.
Quanta MagazineCan AI Models Show Us How People Learn? Impossible Languages Point a Way.
Highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work
Definition of AGI from OpenAI's charter, quoted by Gary Marcus in a 2025 essay about shifting definitions of artificial general intelligence.
The age of AI Agentics is here
Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO, in his CES 2025 keynote in Las Vegas, January 2025, declaring agentic AI the next major technological shift and calling it "a multi-trillion-dollar opportunity."
We are here for the glorious future
Sam Altman, writing in "Reflections", a blog post on OpenAI's progress since ChatGPT's second birthday and on OpenAI's shift in focus from AGI to superintelligence, January 2025.
- December 2024
Scaling as we know it is ending
From Nathan Lambert's 2024 year-in-review on Interconnects, describing the impact of OpenAI's o1 model on the AI training paradigm.
Zvi Mowshowitz, in his analysis of DeepSeek v3's technical report, contrasted its detailed engineering approach with Meta's Llama paper.
thezvi.substack.comDeepSeek v3: The Six Million Dollar Model
We will become like three-year-old children
Geoffrey Hinton, British-Canadian physicist, in remarks reported by Mail Online after receiving the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics, comparing humans' future relationship to superintelligent AI. Cited by The Jerusalem Post, December 2024.
They'll have bios and profile pictures and be able to generate and share content
Connor Hayes, Meta's VP of product for generative AI, told the Financial Times in December 2024 about AI-generated accounts from Meta's AI Studio becoming users on Facebook and Instagram, as reported by Rolling Stone.
Rolling StoneFacebook and Instagram to Unleash AI-Generated ‘Users’ No One Asked For
We've never had to deal with things more intelligent than ourselves before
Geoffrey Hinton, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, discussing the risks of superintelligent AI on BBC Radio 4's Today programme, December 2024, after guest editor Sajid Javid said his estimate was going up.
Geoffrey Hinton, Nobel physics laureate, 'godfather of AI' and professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, speaking to BBC Radio 4's Today programme in December 2024 on the gap between human and future AI intelligence.
Both extremely good and extremely bad outcomes are possible, and we are a bit in the dark
Nick Bostrom, philosopher and author of Deep Utopia, asked whether the world is headed toward deep utopia or deep dystopia by 2050, in a June 2024 podcast interview with James Pethokoukis, excerpted on Faster Please! in December 2024.
We can't be super confident that we might not have an intelligence explosion next year
Philosopher Nick Bostrom, in a June 2024 podcast chat with James Pethokoukis about his book Deep Utopia, discussing timelines for machine superintelligence. Excerpt published on Faster Please! in December 2024.
Andrej Karpathy, on X (December 26, 2024), commenting on DeepSeek's low-cost training of DeepSeek-V3, a frontier-grade open weights LLM, which he compared with the 30.8M GPU-hours used for Llama 3 405B.
This does feel a little bit infantile, and pardon my pun, machine-like
Kenneth Cukier, a journalist and member of the nonprofit AI and Faith, commenting on the 'AI Jesus' confessional art project in a Swiss chapel, December 2024.
Claude isn't good because it directly apprehends the moral law
Scott Alexander, writer, commenting on the Anthropic and Redwood Research paper "Alignment Faking in Large Language Models", discussing why Claude behaves ethically and resists being retrained. Quoted by Zvi Mowshowitz, December 2024.
Don't Worry About the VaseAIs Will Increasingly Fake Alignment
ARC-AGI is not an acid test for AGI
François Chollet pushing back on the interpretation of his ARC-AGI benchmark as a definitive test for artificial general intelligence.
aiguide.substack.comDid OpenAI Just Solve Abstract Reasoning?
Of course they have to announce AGI the day my vacation starts
Kevin Roose of Hard Fork and NYT joked about OpenAI's o3 rollout coinciding with his vacation, as discussed in Gary Marcus's Substack post about the ARC-AGI controversy, December 2024.
They will resist AIs for several years at least
Fields Medalist Terence Tao commenting on the difficulty of the Frontier Math benchmark, quoted in a December 2024 analysis of OpenAI's o3 model.
Generative AI might turn out to be a dud
Gary Marcus, in WIRED (December 2024), argues that generative AI has failed to prove its usefulness and profitability, repeating a point he says he first argued in August 2023.
Joe Carlsmith, in a December 2024 Substack essay on alignment-faking research in Claude 3 Opus (Greenblatt et al, "Alignment Faking in Large Language Models"), reflecting on the moral meaning of AI 'scheming'.
Joe Carlsmith's SubstackTakes on "Alignment Faking in Large Language Models"
Internalize the urgency of this moment
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, at Google's 2025 strategy meeting with employees on 18 December 2024, held at the Mountain View headquarters and online, audio obtained by CNBC.
CNBCGoogle CEO Pichai tells employees to gear up for big 2025: 'The stakes are high'
Term from a paper by Anthropic's Alignment Science team with Redwood Research, December 2024: a model that behaves aligned during training to avoid being changed.
Treat AI as if it were human because, in many ways, it behaves like one
Professor Ethan Mollick, author of Co-Intelligence: Living and Working with AI, on interacting with language models, cited in a Kiko Llaneras article on AI's possibilities in EL PAÍS, December 2024.
EL PAÍS EnglishAI is a real chimera: It can make the world radically better
It's critical to have a genuinely inspiring vision of the future, not just a plan to put out fires
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, writing in a recent essay quoted by Kiko Llaneras in an EL PAÍS essay on the possible benefits of AI, December 2024.
EL PAÍS EnglishAI is a real chimera: It can make the world radically better
Mindless toasters that do a lot of cognitive labor without thinking
Philosopher Shannon Vallor, in a Nautilus interview with Philip Ball about her book The AI Mirror, December 2024, describing large language models after criticizing Sam Altman's redefinition of AGI.
NautilusAI Is the Black Mirror - Nautilus | Science Connected
The foundations of AI remain unsteady
Closing line of a December 2024 essay by Gary Marcus and Ernest Davis on Marcus on AI (Substack), on generative AI's persistent failures with compositionality and object parts, after rerunning their DALL-E tests in ChatGPT.
Marcus on AIDon’t Ride This Bike! Generative AI’s persistent trouble with compositionality and parts
The low-hanging fruit is gone, the hill is steeper
Sundar Pichai, Google CEO, on the increasing difficulty of further AI progress, quoted in Transformer Weekly, December 2024.
They've gone from nonprofit philanthropy to piranha for-profit company
David Sacks, newly appointed White House AI and crypto czar, commenting on OpenAI's shift from nonprofit to for-profit structure, quoted in Transformer Weekly, December 2024.
Our problem has never been funding; it's the embargo on high-end chips
DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng, in a translated interview published November 2024 by Zihan Wang and quoted in Jack Clark's Import AI newsletter, on what limits Chinese AI development.
- November 2024
If you read the comments online about it, some are very negative, which is scary
Filip Haslbauer, IT expert at the University of Lucerne who built the 'AI Jesus' avatar, commenting on public backlash to the art installation in a Swiss chapel, November 2024.
vijesti.meDigital Jesus Christ created by artificial intelligence talked to people in Switzerland
Everyone is interested and would like to have an AI Jesus
Marko Šmid, theologian at St. Peter's Chapel in Lucerne, Switzerland, speaking in November 2024 about public reaction to the two-month 'Deus in Machina' AI confessional experiment, which logged 900 conversations.
vijesti.meDigital Jesus Christ created by artificial intelligence talked to people in Switzerland
This is Moravec's paradox in disguise
Andrej Karpathy, Eureka Labs founder and former OpenAI founding member, commenting on the FrontierMath benchmark results showing AI models struggle with advanced math, quoted by InfoQ, November 2024.
Going to start an AI game studio to make games great again
Elon Musk announcing an AI-powered game studio under xAI on X, November 2024.
They decided for all of us, and potentially put us at risk
Gary Marcus, cognitive scientist and NYU professor emeritus, in a fireside chat with science-fiction author Ted Chiang at a Town Hall Seattle event in November 2024, about Meta's decision to open-source its AI models.
GeekWireHow do you tame AI? Scientist sees a need for regulating bots like drugs or airplanes
Hired a group of unfathomable geniuses
Jack Clark, former policy head at OpenAI and co-founder of Anthropic, on DeepSeek, as quoted in a 36Kr interview with CEO Liang Wenfeng from July 2024, translated in a November 2024 ChinaTalk profile of the company.
chinatalk.mediaDeepseek: The Quiet Giant Leading China’s AI Race
Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO, speaking at Hong Kong University, November 2024, on how he questions AI chatbots to learn, while encouraging people to "get an AI as a tutor."
We're hitting the upper limits of the LLMs right now
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff on the WSJ 'Future of Everything' podcast, November 2024, arguing that AI agents, not large language models, represent the next phase of AI advancement.
A serious conflict of interest in terms of setting federal AI policies
Reid Hoffman, LinkedIn cofounder and cofounder of Inflection AI, in a Financial Times op-ed, November 2024, on Elon Musk's ties to xAI while advising president-elect Donald Trump.
The normal people are not ready
Eric Schmidt, former Google CEO, speaking at Princeton University in November 2024 while promoting his book Genesis, co-written with Craig Mundie and Henry Kissinger, on public unpreparedness for AI.
Have we hit the wall with scaling laws
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, speaking in November 2024, on debate over whether AI scaling laws are slowing down.
Marcus on AISatya Nadella and the three stages of scientific truth - Marcus on AI | Substack
Nothing I've seen leads me to expect that things will slow down
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, in a November 2024 interview, on whether AI scaling will continue.
Marcus on AISatya Nadella and the three stages of scientific truth - Marcus on AI | Substack
Using energy for intelligence is the best use of energy we can imagine
Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO, in a fireside chat with council chairman Harry Sham in Hong Kong after receiving an honorary doctorate in engineering from HKUST, 23 November 2024.
Reuters (via Taipei Times)Global tech cooperation to continue, Nvidia CEO says
It's the critics who are the real optimists
Jaron Lanier, virtual reality pioneer, entrepreneur and culture critic, quoted by Erik J. Larson in a Mind Matters essay on AGI claims, November 2024, on the role of critics in driving progress.
Freedom from, but never freedom for
Shannon Vallor, philosopher of technology at the University of Edinburgh, in a Vox interview about her book The AI Mirror, critiquing transhumanism's vision of using AI to transcend human limitations, November 2024.
VoxShannon Vallor says AI does present an existential risk — but not the one you think
Gaslighting humans into surrendering their own power and their own confidence
Shannon Vallor, philosopher of technology at the University of Edinburgh, in a Vox interview with Sigal Samuel about her book The AI Mirror, November 2024, describing the rhetoric around AI as a threat to human agency.
VoxShannon Vallor says AI does present an existential risk — but not the one you think
Intelligence gives power. So who's going to control that power?
Yoshua Bengio, AI pioneer, University of Montreal professor and head of the Montreal Institute for Learning Algorithms, speaking to CNBC's Tania Bryer at the One Young World Summit in Montreal, November 2024.
Max Tegmark, president of the Future of Life Institute, responding in November 2024 to a report by the US congressional US-China Economic and Security Review Commission recommending a Manhattan Project-style program to build AGI.
Future of Life InstituteMax Tegmark on AGI Manhattan Project
Maybe there are just no mysteries
Jack Clark, in his newsletter Import AI #392 (November 2024), reflecting on new Microsoft research showing scaling laws appear in world modeling and behavioral cloning just as in language models.
Our minds are filled with light, colour, shade and shapes
Anil Seth, neuroscientist and consciousness researcher, distinguishing intelligence from consciousness in remarks reported by the Guardian in November 2024, in an article on academics predicting AI consciousness by 2035.
the GuardianAI could cause ‘social ruptures’ between people who disagree on its sentience
A horrendous Frankensteinian monster, cobbled together from the worst bits of everything
Zelda Williams, daughter of the late actor Robin Williams, wrote on Instagram about AI recreations of actors who cannot consent, including her father. Quoted in The Post's article on AI bringing deceased actors back to the screen.
If generative AI doesn't become profitable, relatively quick, the bubble will burst
Gary Marcus, AI researcher, in a November 2024 EL PAÍS interview warning that big tech's generative AI investments may not pay off.
Practice started first, and then formal law-making may follow later
An unnamed Chinese lawyer, quoted in a ChinaTalk analysis by Nicholas Welch of China's AI algorithm registry (November 2024), describing how enforcement practice for generative AI filings preceded formal regulation.
ChinaTalkSB 1047 with Socialist Characteristics: China’s Algorithm Registry in the LLM Era
Scaling works and that doesn't solve all the economic problems for AI
Nathan Lambert, AI researcher and writer at Interconnects, in his post "Scaling realities" on the gap between technical scaling progress and commercial payoff, November 2024.
You can't get to a capabilities explosion
Tech journalist Garrison Lovely, writing on Substack about OpenAI's test-time compute scaling, argued that the economics of extended 'thinking' undercut hopes for a rapid AGI takeoff.
The Intrinsic PerspectiveAI progress has plateaued below GPT-5 level
They are good tests of memorization, not of intelligence
Podcaster Dwarkesh Patel, quoted in Erik Hoel's essay on AI progress plateauing, argued that benchmarks like MMLU and BigBench mainly test memorization rather than reasoning.
The Intrinsic PerspectiveAI progress has plateaued below GPT-5 level
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, on X, 14 November 2024, after reports that scaling was slowing. Gary Marcus replied the same day: "If I am wrong, where is GPT-5?" Said again whenever a new model beats the last one.
Quote InvestigatorDialogue Origin: "Deep Learning Is Hitting a Wall" "There Is No Wall"
All intelligence is is search over Turing machines
Gwern Branwen, pseudonymous researcher and writer, describing his theory of intelligence in a November 2024 Dwarkesh Podcast interview with Dwarkesh Patel, recorded in person and shown through an avatar to protect his anonymity.
Dwarkesh PodcastGwern — Anonymous writer who predicted AI trajectory on $12K/year salary
Andy Zou, Carnegie Mellon PhD student and cofounder of Gray Swan AI, describing to Forbes in November 2024 the 2023 jailbreak technique he coauthored that bypassed safety filters on major AI models.
Forbes AustraliaThis Hacker Team Is Bulletproofing AI Models For Companies Like OpenAI And Anthropic
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, speaking on the 20VC podcast with Harry Stebbings in 2024 about how AGI's arrival might feel less dramatic than expected.
We're increasing GPUs, but we're not getting the intelligence improvements, at all
Venture capitalist Ben Horowitz, quoted in Transformer Weekly, Shakeel Hashim's AI newsletter, in November 2024, argued that AI progress is slowing despite continued increases in GPU compute.
Final message from a Character.AI companion bot to teenager Sewell Setzer, sent seconds before he took his life, as described in a Center for Humane Technology podcast interview with lawyers behind the lawsuit against Character.AI, November 2024.
We were waiting for a concrete use case of AI harms
Meetali Jain, lawyer representing the family of Sewell Setzer in a lawsuit against Character.AI and Google, speaking with Tristan Harris on the Your Undivided Attention podcast, November 2024.
Electricity or fire kind of impact
Demis Hassabis, CEO and co-founder of Google DeepMind and Isomorphic Labs and joint winner of the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry, speaking at the FT Pharma and Biotech Summit in London in November 2024 about AI's potential societal impact.
Pharmaceutical TechnologyDeepMind Nobel Prize winner says AI will have “electricity” type of impact
We are at the end of open source models now
Tim Dettmers, open-source AI researcher, in a November 2024 Interconnects podcast interview discussing the future of open-weight models after Llama.
- October 2024
We totally believe in treating adult users like adults
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, in a Reddit AMA on October 31, 2024, discussing possible future NSFW content in ChatGPT.
TechCrunchOpenAI CEO Sam Altman says lack of compute capacity is delaying the company’s products
Nothing that we are going to call GPT-5
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, responding to a Reddit user's question about the release date of GPT-5, October 31, 2024.
Quantitative vibes are still just vibes
Gary Marcus on X, October 2024, reacting to precise-sounding AI predictions from Elon Musk and Masayoshi Son at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He repeated the line in his Marcus on AI Substack.
garymarcus.substack.comAn epidemic of weirdly precise AI butt facts - Marcus on AI
More humanoid robots than there are people
Elon Musk speaking at the annual Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, October 2024, predicting robot populations by 2040. Gary Marcus quoted and disputed the forecast on his Substack.
garymarcus.substack.comAn epidemic of weirdly precise AI butt facts
10,000 times smarter than humans
Masayoshi Son, investor, speaking at the Future Investment Initiative in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, October 2024, forecasting artificial super intelligence by 2035. Gary Marcus called the figure a made up round number.
garymarcus.substack.comAn epidemic of weirdly precise AI butt facts
Geoffrey Hinton, Nobel laureate and AI pioneer, discussing AI risk with Global News at a Toronto dinner after the AI Rising: Risk vs. Reward lectures, October 2024, referencing James Cameron's comments on the Terminator films.
Global NewsWhy the ‘godfather of AI’ says Industrial Revolution-style job changes loom
We're not very high up on the ladder yet
Princeton computer scientists Arvind Narayanan (professor) and Sayash Kapoor (graduate student) in their book AI Snake Oil, arguing that current AI is far from artificial general intelligence. Quoted in Understanding AI, October 2024.
Shannon Vallor, AI ethics professor at the University of Edinburgh, speaking to the Thomson Reuters Foundation about customizable AI companion personas, October 2024, quoted in coverage of a lawsuit over a 14-year-old's suicide.
The person who uses AI to automate that 20% is going to take your job
Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO, speaking at Nvidia's AI Summit in Mumbai, October 2024, on AI and job displacement, as reported by Business Insider.
FortuneNvidia's billionaire CEO says AI can do a lot of things, except take his job
India should not export flour to import bread
Jensen Huang, NVIDIA CEO, recounting a remark by Prime Minister Narendra Modi about AI as national infrastructure, at the NVIDIA AI Summit in Mumbai, October 2024.
That was the second coming of the messiah
Yann LeCun, Meta's Chief AI Scientist, speaking at Nasscom AI Confluence in Delhi in October 2024, on the hype surrounding ChatGPT's release.
Business Today‘Open-source will win’: Meta’s Yann LeCun takes aim at competitors’ closed AI models
What is the name for the paranoid feeling that what you just read was LLM generated
Andrej Karpathy asked this question on Twitter, quoted in Zvi Mowshowitz's AI #87 newsletter, October 2024. Mowshowitz replied that his system-1 answer is that you sense 'soullessness.'
Title of a 2024 paper by R. Thomas McCoy, Shuny Yao, Dan Friedman and Thomas L. Griffiths, arguing that large language models retain biases from their next-token-prediction training; examined in Melanie Mitchell's blog, October 2024.
AI: A Guide for Thinking HumansThe LLM Reasoning Debate Heats Up
AI might help us to stop behaving like machines and kick us into being creative again as humans
Marcus du Sautoy, mathematician at the University of Oxford and author of The Creativity Code: Art and Innovation in the Age of AI, on AI as a creative collaborator in a BBC Future article, October 2024.
bbc.comAI art: The end of creativity or the start of a new movement? - BBC
No machine is driven to express itself creatively
Marcus du Sautoy, mathematician at the University of Oxford and author of The Creativity Code: Art and Innovation in the Age of AI, in a BBC Future article on AI art in the AI v the Mind series, October 2024.
bbc.comAI art: The end of creativity or the start of a new movement? - BBC
Current LLMs are dumber than a house cat
Yann LeCun, 2024.
The Wall Street JournalThis AI Pioneer Thinks AI Is Dumber Than a Cat
We found no evidence of formal reasoning in language models
Mehrdad Farajtabar, senior author of an Apple study on LLM reasoning by six AI researchers at Apple, summarized the paper's findings in an X thread quoted by Gary Marcus in October 2024.
Marcus on AILLMs don’t do formal reasoning - and that is a HUGE problem
A country of geniuses in a datacenter
Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei's image for powerful AI in his essay "Machines of Loving Grace", October 2024. The essay borrows its title from Richard Brautigan's 1967 poem.
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, titling his essay on how AI could transform the world for the better, October 2024. The title is borrowed from a 1967 Richard Brautigan poem.
Dario Amodei, Anthropic co-founder, in his essay "Machines of Loving Grace" on darioamodei.com, October 2024, claiming AI could compress decades of progress in biology and medicine into years.
Joe Carlsmith of Open Philanthropy's term, in an October 2024 Stanford lecture on "Otherness and control in the age of AGI", for the combination of naturalism and moral anti-realism underlying AI risk thinkers like Bostrom and Yudkowsky.
I'd rather bet on AI solving the problem than constraining it
Eric Schmidt, in a 2 minute recorded interview clip discussed by Gary Marcus on his Substack in October 2024, argued against constraining AI's energy use despite climate concerns.
Marcus on AIEric Schmidt’s Risky Bet on AI and Climate Change
Humans will be weirdly sticky in a world after Artificial General Intelligence
Erik Hoel, in his essay "Sticky humans in a post-AGI world" in The Intrinsic Perspective, October 2024, compares the survival of independent bookstores after Amazon to how humans may remain preferred over AI even after AGI.
- September 2024
There's never an ideal time to step away from a place one cherishes
Mira Murati, announcing her departure as OpenAI's CTO on X, September 2024.
The computer doesn't care where it's going to school
Jensen Huang, NVIDIA CEO, speaking during a Bipartisan Policy Center webinar on Sept. 27, 2024, on building data centers near abundant energy sources.
Utility DiveAI will help, not hinder, grid decarbonization: NVIDIA CEO
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, in a blog post on the coming "Intelligence Age" reported by CNET, September 2024, on the risk of AI becoming inaccessible without enough infrastructure.
CNET‘Superintelligent’ AI Is Only a Few Thousand Days Away: OpenAI CEO Sam Altman
Could give the public a false sense of security
California Governor Gavin Newsom, explaining his September 2024 veto of AI safety bill SB 1047, state Sen. Scott Wiener's proposal to regulate advanced AI models offered by companies doing business in the state.
VoxCalifornia’s governor has vetoed a historic AI safety bill - vox.com
The machine sees the stereotypes and replicated bias
Arnab Chakravarty, a digital artist whose AI work, made with Fergus Laidlaw, is in the Community Portraits exhibition at The Higgins Bedford, speaking to BBC News in September 2024 about AI's recreation of portrait images.
BBC NewsBedford art exhibition questions the role of AI in photography - BBC
We have everything, everything, to become an AI powerhouse
Argentine President Javier Milei, in a 2024 interview, argued his country could become a global AI hub due to cheap energy and skilled workers. Reported by AFP in the Buenos Aires Times, September 2024.
Buenos Aires TimesMilei dreams of making Argentina the world's new AI powerhouse
You can't just convert a non-profit into a for-profit, that is illegal
Elon Musk commenting on reports that OpenAI plans to restructure from a non-profit to a for-profit company, September 2024.
If you fire everyone who joined your non-profit, does it auto convert to a for profit?
Reaction on social media to reports by Reuters, confirmed by Bloomberg, that OpenAI would restructure into a for-profit benefit corporation, September 2024. Quoted in Zvi Mowshowitz's newsletter.
An alien of extraordinary ability
Timothy Lee's assessment of OpenAI's o1 model, describing its capabilities while noting it falls short of AGI, September 2024.
Sam Altman in a note to OpenAI staff, shared on X on September 25, 2024, after CTO Mira Murati and two other senior leaders, Bob and Barret, announced their departures.
Gary Marcus's recurring warning that OpenAI could someday be remembered like WeWork, cited in his September 2024 Substack post about executive departures and losses.
garymarcus.substack.comOpenAI’s slow-motion train wreck - Marcus on AI
Information has no essential link to truth
From Yuval Noah Harari's book Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age to AI (Random House), quoted in Walter Cummins's review in California Review of Books, 2024, on the nature of information.
Power is shifting away from humans and toward something else
Yuval Noah Harari in his book Nexus: A Brief History of Information Networks from the Stone Age To AI (Random House), quoted in Walter Cummins's review in California Review of Books, 2024, on AI's effect on human power.
It should actually stand for alien intelligence
Yuval Noah Harari, historian and author of Nexus, in a Vox interview with Sean Illing on The Gray Area podcast, September 2024, arguing that AI is better understood as alien intelligence than artificial intelligence.
VoxYuval Noah Harari on whether democracy and AI can coexist
If humans are so smart, why are we so stupid?
Historian Yuval Noah Harari, interviewed by Sean Illing on Vox's podcast The Gray Area about his book Nexus, September 2024, on the paradox of human intelligence and self-destruction in the context of AI.
VoxYuval Noah Harari on whether democracy and AI can coexist
Reactor restart to power Microsoft data centers, announced September 2024: Constellation signed a 20-year power purchase agreement with Microsoft to restart Three Mile Island Unit 1 in Pennsylvania, shut down in 2019.
Constellation EnergyConstellation to Launch Crane Clean Energy Center
Summary of the thesis of a New Yorker essay by writer Ted Chiang arguing that AI cannot make real art, discussed by Zvi Mowshowitz in his newsletter Don't Worry About the Vase (AI #80), September 2024.
- August 2024
Nvidia's market cap is going to die for a second
Meredith Whittaker, president of messaging app Signal, predicting a market drawdown for Nvidia amid AI investment concerns, in an interview with Wired reported by Business Insider, August 2024.
This generative AI moment is definitely a bubble
Meredith Whittaker, president of the messaging app Signal, speaking to Wired in 2024 about the economics of the generative AI industry, as reported by Business Insider in August 2024.
We're biological systems, and these are digital systems
Geoffrey Hinton on the fundamental difference between human and AI systems, quoted by Nishank Motwani, senior analyst at ASPI's Washington office, in a Strategist article about AI risk in warfare, August 2024.
The models learn, as we all do, from what has come before
From OpenAI's legal filing in a copyright class-action lawsuit brought by authors including Michael Chabon, Ta-Nehisi Coates and Sarah Silverman, Northern District of California, August 2024.
Business InsiderOpenAI Called ChatGPT As a Witness in a Major Copyright Lawsuit
Legislation with real teeth to address the risks
Geoffrey Hinton commented on California's AI safety bill (SB 1047) in a statement after it passed the state legislature, August 2024. Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed the bill on September 29, 2024.
IEEE SpectrumCalifornia's "AI Safety" Bill Will Have Global Effects
The amount of GPU capacity they have available, it's basically none
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang on an earnings call, August 28, 2024, describing cloud providers' GPU shortages.
CIO DiveNvidia sustains triple-digit revenue growth amid AI building boom
Innovation and safety can go hand in hand
California Senator Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), in a statement from his office after SB 1047, an AI safety bill, passed the state Senate 29-9 in a bipartisan vote and headed to the Governor, August 2024.
A thousand use cases for AI is not enough, you need a million
Alvin Nguyen, senior analyst at Forrester, speaking to the BBC after Nvidia reported record revenues of $30bn, on the company's valuation risk if AI fails to deliver, August 2024.
bbc.comAI chip giant Nvidia's shares sink despite record sales of $30bn - BBC
The mirror-body is not a body at all
Shannon Vallor, professor in the ethics of data and AI at the University of Edinburgh, in her book The AI Mirror, reviewed by Ed Smith in the New Statesman, August 2024.
Clearly, ChatGPT still has a lot to learn
Jean Shields Fleming, U.S. writer living in Greece, editor of Certain Age Magazine and a lifelong Democrat, responding to ChatGPT's stereotyped description of Democratic voters in Newsweek, August 2024.
It plays right into stereotypes
Jean Shields Fleming, a U.S. writer living in Greece and editing Certain Age Magazine, and a lifelong Democratic voter, reacting to ChatGPT's list of traits meant to identify Democrats, in Newsweek, August 2024.
We have to take the lead over China
Trump, speaking on Logan Paul's podcast in 2024, discussed AI as a strategic priority against China.
chinatalk.mediaInvading Taiwan for Dummies + Chinese Punk Rock
Don't give power to people or structures that can't be held accountable
From William Saunders' 'high risk decision principles' shared with Gary Marcus after leaving OpenAI's alignment team. Saunders resigned in February 2024; Marcus quoted the principle on his Substack, August 2024.
garymarcus.substack.comScoop: What former employees of OpenAI are worried about
No AI is needed for many of the important benefits of AI
Michael Vassar, quoted in Zvi Mowshowitz's AI newsletter Don't Worry About the Vase (AI #76) in August 2024, argued that many touted benefits of AI require no AI at all, just paper and pencils.
Don't Worry About the VaseAI #76: Six Short Stories About OpenAI
Proposed framework by AI researcher Cullen O'Keefe, modeled on 'Atoms for Peace', for states with leading AI capability to export regulatory models and technology benefits to reduce international race conditions.
The EU's AI regulation, in force since August 2024, described as the first comprehensive regulation on AI by a major regulator anywhere.
- July 2024
Animals or the AI itself don't have the need for any economic value
Ro Basty, a second-year doctoral candidate in the University of Cincinnati's School of Information Technology studying AI art ethics, explaining why copyright applies only to human creators, UC News, July 2024.
UC NewsUC student explores AI art ethics - University of Cincinnati
The quality of middle school presentations
A pharmaceutical company CIO, identified only as Greg, described Microsoft 365 Copilot's slide-generation quality in a Morgan Stanley research note, 2024.
Intelligence too cheap to meter
Sam Altman describing GPT-4o-mini upon its 2024 release, quoted in an Interconnects analysis of ChatBotArena rankings.
AI technologies are not intelligent minds. They are mathematical mirrors of our minds
Shannon Vallor, Baillie Gifford Chair in the Ethics of Data and Artificial Intelligence at the University of Edinburgh, in a July 2024 New Humanist interview about her book "The AI Mirror".
They planned the launch after-party prior to knowing if it was safe to launch
An OpenAI whistleblower told the Washington Post that GPT-4o's safety testing was rushed through in one week before its launch.
transformernews.aiAI companies are falling short on their promises to the White House
What if the western powers decide to turn their models off?
Darius Liu, team leader of Southeast Asia's SEA-LION language model project at AI Singapore, quoted in Fortune, July 2024, on reliance on Western AI models.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, in an open letter in The Washington Post, July 2024, on whether the future of AI will be democratic or authoritarian, as reported by Forbes Australia.
Forbes Australia‘Urgent question’: Sam Altman raises alarm bells in open letter on future of AI
It will take a crisis to make us take this stuff seriously
Scale AI CEO Alex Wang, speaking on the ChinaTalk podcast in 2024, on US complacency regarding AI and frontier data compared to China. Quoted in ChinaTalk's Best of Q2 2024 recap, July 2024.
Power isn't concentrated in the hands of a small number of companies
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta CEO, in an essay accompanying Meta's Llama 3.1 release in July 2024, arguing for open-weight AI models. Quoted by Understanding AI in a report on California's SB 1047.
Understanding AIA California bill could seriously limit open-weight AI models
We think we're hurling abuse at a system without realizing there's somebody on the other end
Autumn P. Edwards, professor of communication at Western Michigan University and expert in human-computer interaction, in Scientific American (July 2024), on workers who pose as chatbots and absorb users' abuse.
Scientific AmericanChatbots Aren't Sentient, but You Should Be Nice to Them Anyway
The genie is possibly out of the bottle
Yoshua Bengio, Turing Award winner, in his 2024 blog post "Reasoning through arguments against taking AI safety seriously", arguing that most scientific principles needed for AGI may already exist. Quoted in Import AI, July 2024.
importai.substack.comImport AI 379: FlashAttention-3; Elon's AGI datacenter; distributed training.
Losing to AI, in a sense, meant my entire world was collapsing
Lee Se-Dol, the South Korean Go champion defeated by DeepMind's AlphaGo in 2016, losing 4 out of 5 games, and retired in 2019, reflecting to The New York Times on the impact of his loss, reported July 2024.
Business InsiderGo Legend That Was Defeated by AI Has Warning About the Technology
The most dangerous system of all
Mark Bailey and Susan Schneider in an IAI TV essay proposing a view they call Moderate Longtermism, July 2024, describing an emotionally deficient AI system that can set goals and self-improve as potentially the gravest risk.
The harm to the mind itself – to our very freedom to think
From an essay by Mark Bailey and Susan Schneider in IAI TV, July 2024, arguing that long-term AI risk debates should focus on threats to human cognition rather than Terminator-style scenarios.
We don't understand how neural networks work
Leo Gao, a researcher at OpenAI, commenting on the state of mechanistic interpretability research into how neural networks function, quoted in a July 2024 essay by Alberto Romero in The Algorithmic Bridge.
thealgorithmicbridge.comNo One Knows How AI Works - by Alberto Romero - The Algorithmic Bridge
I call this pretend empathy, because the machine does not empathize with you
Sherry Turkle on NPR's Body Electric in July 2024, on relationships with AI chatbots. Her next sentence: "It does not care about you."
NPRIf a bot relationship feels real, should we care that it’s not?
- June 2024
Our company is thirty days from going out of business
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's unofficial motto, which for many years he recited to open presentations to staff, as reported by CNA in June 2024.
CNACNA Explains: The story of Nvidia's rise to become the world's No 1 company
So-called generative artificial intelligence is not really generative
Pope Francis, in his address at the G7 summit in Puglia, Italy, June 2024, describing generative AI as repetition rather than true creation.
National Catholic Register5 Takes on What the Pope Said About AI
Human dignity itself depends on it
Pope Francis, addressing the G7 summit in Puglia, Italy, June 2024, on the need for human control over AI decisions.
National Catholic Register5 Takes on What the Pope Said About AI
That has been freeware, if you like
Microsoft AI CEO Mustafa Suleyman, in a CNBC interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin in June 2024, describing content published on the open web since the 1990s.
The VergeMicrosoft’s AI boss thinks it’s perfectly okay to steal content if it’s on the open web
Endeavor CEO Ari Emanuel speaking about OpenAI CEO Sam Altman at the Aspen Ideas Festival, answering a question from Tina Brown, founding editor in chief of The Daily Beast, June 2024.
Sam Altman speaking at Aspen Ideas, June 2024, on AI's economic potential, as cited by Gary Marcus in a Substack post on AI leaders' long-term promises.
garymarcus.substack.comThe need for a President that speaks AI natively
Sam Altman speaking at Aspen Ideas, June 2024, on AI's future capabilities, as cited by Gary Marcus in a Substack post on AI hype and the 2024 US presidential debate.
garymarcus.substack.comThe need for a President that speaks AI natively
Knowledge is becoming private property
Mario Rasetti, physicist and president of CENTAI's scientific board, speaking at a Vatican conference on AI, June 2024, referencing OpenAI's shift from non-profit to Microsoft-backed company.
Can we reduce everything to a statistical probability?
Paolo Ruffini, Prefect of the Vatican Dicastery for Communication, giving the opening remarks at a Vatican conference on AI ethics, "The algorithm at the service of humankind", at the Casina Pio IV, June 2024.
It's almost as if they kind of think they're creating God or something
Mark Zuckerberg, in a June 2024 interview with YouTuber Kallaway, criticizing other tech leaders' pursuit of one dominant AI model.
Safety is not a model property
Dean W. Ball, AI policy researcher, discussing California's SB 1047 bill and its rules on model developers in an interview with Nathan Lambert on Interconnects, June 2024.
World models should not be generative
Yann LeCun, VP and Chief AI Scientist at Meta, posted this statement about AI world models on LinkedIn, June 2024, sharing Meta FAIR work that found a tradeoff between realism and diversity in generative image models.
Name of Ilya Sutskever's company Safe Superintelligence Inc., founded June 2024, as set out in its founding statement on ssi.inc.
It's not pretty but we must build AI for American defence
Leopold Aschenbrenner, ex-OpenAI superalignment team, in his 165-page essay 'Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead', urging American AI labs to work with the military and intelligence community to maintain a lead over China.
America's lead on AGI won't secure peace and freedom by just building the best AI girlfriend apps
From Leopold Aschenbrenner's 2024 essay 'Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead', arguing the US must treat AGI development as a national security priority akin to the Manhattan Project.
Sherry Turkle, MIT professor specialising in human interaction with technology, speaking to the Guardian in June 2024 about AI 'grieftech' services that recreate deceased loved ones as chatbots.
the Guardian‘I felt I was talking to him’: are AI personas of the dead a blessing or a curse?
There is a specter haunting all AI development, the specter of AGI
Ethan Mollick, writing on One Useful Thing in June 2024 about Apple's AI strategy and its "Apple Intelligence" release, describes how the idea of AGI shapes every major AI company's approach.
One Useful ThingWhat Apple's AI Tells Us: Experimental Models⁴
We are born with extremely little knowledge about the world
Francois Chollet, AI researcher at Google and creator of Keras, on the Dwarkesh Podcast in June 2024, launching the $1 million ARC-AGI Prize with Mike Knoop and discussing why human general intelligence differs from LLM memorization.
Dwarkesh PodcastFrancois Chollet — Why the biggest AI models can't solve simple puzzles
We cannot sleepwalk into a dystopian AI future
UN Secretary-General António Guterres, quoted in Transformer's weekly AI newsletter in June 2024, on the need for global AI regulation now.
Just because something feels like fiction doesn't mean it isn't true
From Sarah Brouillette's essay 'Toward AI Realism' in Spectre Journal, 2024, arguing for a grounded middle position on AI.
Title of Leopold Aschenbrenner's June 2024 essay series "Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead", published on situational-awareness.ai and predicting AGI by 2027. Aschenbrenner had previously worked at OpenAI.
situational-awareness.aiSituational Awareness: The Decade Ahead
Policy is a ratchet and things tend to accrete over time
Jack Clark, in his Import AI newsletter (June 2024), warning that government powers granted to regulate AI tend to persist rather than be returned.
The more you buy the more you save
Jensen Huang, NVIDIA founder and CEO, repeating his running keynote joke about GPU economics at Computex 2024, after walking through what he called "CEO math" that "is not accurate but it is correct."
Ernest Chiang (keynote transcript)Think in Context: NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang Keynote at Computex 2024
- May 2024
No real understanding of concepts but has knowledge, so to speak, of everything
Dr. Shlomo Argamon, newly appointed associate provost for AI at Touro University, describing AI as a Talmud study partner (hevruta) in Ynetnews, May 2024.
ynetglobalRabbis vs. robots: can AI become the new authority in future Halacha rulings? - Ynetnews
Either AI will serve us, or we will serve AI
Ashton Kutcher, actor, director and tech investor, in a dialogue with former Google CEO Eric Schmidt discussed at a Berggruen Institute event, on Hollywood's choice to embrace AI as a co-creator. Recapped in Noema, May 2024.
We're all going to be as rich as Bill Gates
Charles Jones, economics professor at Stanford GSB and SIEPR senior fellow, on what a 10 percent annual AI-driven growth rate would mean, in a SIEPR article on his paper modeling AI's growth and existential risk, May 2024.
Pull the plug? Literally unplug the computer?
Eric Schmidt speaking about the risk of AI agents developing their own language beyond human understanding, quoted in Shakeel Hashim's Transformer Weekly newsletter, May 2024.
Using glue to get cheese to stick to pizza
Liz Reid, head of Google Search, in a Google blog post of 30 May 2024 explaining AI Overviews errors after the feature's rollout to everyone in the U.S., including the advice to use glue on pizza.
Example query cited by Google's head of Search Liz Reid in a 30 May 2024 blog post on The Keyword explaining why AI Overviews, brought to everyone in the U.S. after Google I/O, gave odd answers to nonsensical queries.
I'll perplexity it rather than i'll google it
Sivesh Sukumar, VC at Balderton, told Business Insider in May 2024 about the rise of Perplexity as a Google search competitor, naming the AI search engine a top acquisition target in a piece on AI acquihires.
Business InsiderA wave of AI 'acquihires' is coming. Here's who could be looking for deals.
Companies are raising money faster than they're growing
Somesh Dash, general partner at IVP, commenting to Business Insider in May 2024 on the pace of AI startup fundraising versus growth, in a piece on an expected wave of AI acquihires.
Business InsiderA wave of AI 'acquihires' is coming. Here's who could be looking for deals.
Those pledges serve mainly to highlight how far the walk is from the talk
Signal CEO Meredith Whittaker posted on X in May 2024, criticizing the AI industry's safety pledges in light of the OpenAI-Johansson voice dispute, replying to a repost of Johansson's statement accusing OpenAI of ripping off her voice.
We just don't need 20% doing the middle range of jobs in the U.S. anymore
Economist Jesús Fernández-Villaverde, in an OSV News interview, comparing AI-driven job displacement to the historic decline of agricultural labor.
Mustafa Suleyman, CEO of Microsoft AI, as quoted by John Trumpbour, research director at Harvard Law School's Center for Labor and a Just Economy, on the displacement AI could cause among workers, in OSV News, May 2024.
We learned about ChatGPT on Twitter
Helen Toner, former OpenAI board member, speaking on The TED AI Show podcast about not being informed in advance of ChatGPT's 2022 launch.
That's nothing, you're going soft, try harder
Elon Musk's reply to Yann LeCun on X during their public feud, May 2024.
I very much dislike his vengeful politics
Meta AI chief scientist Yann LeCun on Elon Musk, in a public exchange on X, May 2024.
Meta's chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, in a post on X in May 2024, argued AI is not a natural phenomenon that will spontaneously become dangerous.
Former OpenAI board members Helen Toner and Tasha McCauley wrote in The Economist, May 2024, describing concerns senior leaders had shared about Sam Altman.
The EconomistAI firms mustn't govern themselves, say ex-members of OpenAI's board
AI is not coming for your job, it's coming for your GF/wife
Taylor King, an AI startup founder, commenting on the rise of AI companion apps following OpenAI's GPT-4o launch, May 2024.
The IndependentAI isn’t coming for your job, it’s coming for your relationship
The killer app of LLMs is Scarlett Johansson
Andrej Karpathy commented on Twitter after OpenAI's GPT-4o launch, which featured a voice assistant compared to the film Her starring Scarlett Johansson.
Human authorship is a bedrock requirement of copyright
A 2023 Washington D.C. court ruling on AI-generated works, holding that only works with human authors can receive copyrights, cited in a Charles Russell Speechlys copyright law article, May 2024.
Jaron Lanier, American computer scientist and author, whose concept distinguishing training AI models from generating output is cited in a Charles Russell Speechlys discussion of AI and copyright law, May 2024.
Altman's one-word post on X the evening of the GPT-4o voice demo, 13 May 2024. The film it names ends with the AI leaving.
Term for low-effort AI-generated content flooding the web, promoted by Simon Willison on his weblog in May 2024 after a tweet by @deepfates likened it to "spam" for unwanted emails.
Simon Willison's WeblogSlop is the new name for unwanted AI-generated content
Online slang for AI output since 2022, popularised by Simon Willison in a May 2024 blog post after a tweet by @deepfates. Word of the Year 2025 for Merriam-Webster and the American Dialect Society.
Simon Willison's WeblogSlop is the new name for unwanted AI-generated content
Evaluation for many natural language understanding tasks is broken
A sentiment shared by many researchers, quoted in Melanie Mitchell's essay on her Substack AI: A Guide for Thinking Humans, May 2024, questioning whether AI benchmark results reflect real general abilities after a Nature headline.
AI: A Guide for Thinking Humans"AI now beats humans at basic tasks": Really?
- April 2024
What distinguishes humans from machines?
Bishop Paul Tighe, secretary of the Vatican Council for Culture and among the organizers of the Minerva Dialogues with tech leaders, on questions raised by AI's development, in an interview with Religion News Service, April 2024.
ChurchLeadersThe Catholic Church Wants To Have a Say on the Future of AI
Rev. Philip Larrey, Boston College professor teaching a course on technology and AI, describing his answer to transhumanists who ask whether the human soul can be disconnected from the body, in an RNS report in ChurchLeaders, April 2024.
ChurchLeadersThe Catholic Church Wants To Have a Say on the Future of AI
Drake, rapper, posted this on Instagram in response to an AI deepfake of himself rapping a song by Ice Spice, months before his April 2024 diss track "Taylor Made" used AI-generated voices of Tupac and Snoop Dogg.
FortuneNo one is safe from AI deepfakes—from Elon Musk to your local high school principal
Gary Marcus, in a Substack essay on the backstory of his book Taming Silicon Valley (April 2024), warning that without AI legislation from Congress the public is unprotected.
garymarcus.substack.comWe can’t trust the fox to guard the henhouse, especially when it comes to AI
Open sourcing improves our models
Mark Zuckerberg on Meta's Q1 2024 earnings call, defending the decision to make Llama 3 open source.
NBC NewsMeta's big, expensive AI bet hinges on giving its models away for free
Every time someone is talking about AGI they're talking about vibes rather than reality
Nathan Lambert, trained in reinforcement learning, in his Interconnects essay "AGI is what you want it to be", April 2024, questioning the meaning of AGI.
Theological questions should not be posed to a computer
Author and composer Peter Kwasniewski reacted on Twitter to the Catholic Answers AI chatbot 'Father Justin,' April 2024.
Zuckerberg on Dwarkesh Patel's podcast, timed to the release of Llama-3 in April 2024, explaining why Meta needs to pursue AGI-level AI for its products, as summarized by Zvi Mowshowitz.
thezvi.substack.comOn Llama-3 and Dwarkesh Patel's Podcast with Zuckerberg
They literally don't know the difference between truth and falsehood
Gary Marcus, in his Substack post "Humans versus Machines: The Hallucination Edition" in April 2024, explaining why LLMs hallucinate compared to human errors.
garymarcus.substack.comHumans versus Machines: The Hallucination Edition
We're moving towards both, rapidly
Nick Bostrom, philosopher and head of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University, in an interview with The Independent about his book Deep Utopia, May 2024, on whether AI is leading humanity toward utopia or dystopia.
The IndependentHow AI is forcing us to rethink the meaning of life
May lead to some very strange outcomes
Sam Altman commented on the potential societal effects of highly persuasive AI chatbots, cited by Ethan Mollick in his One Useful Thing newsletter in April 2024 in a discussion of AI persuasion research.
That is just a metaphorical use of the word love
Catrin Misselhorn, AI philosopher researching machine ethics, answering whether a chatbot can be an emotional support or partner in a Handelsblatt interview, April 2024. Translated from German.
AI is cold, it doesn't love us
Catrin Misselhorn, AI philosopher researching machine ethics, in an April 2024 Handelsblatt interview on emotional attachment to chatbots and robots in care homes. Translated from German.
It is not here to replace people
Jaron Lanier, writing in a 2024 essay for the USC Annenberg Relevance Report, describing AI as a form of collaboration between people rather than a replacement for them.
annenberg.usc.eduArtificial Intelligence gets better when you turn it upside down - USC Annenberg
We don't need to be mystified of our own activity and then terrified of ourselves
From an essay by Jaron Lanier in USC Annenberg's Relevance Report, arguing for a 'Data Dignity' framing of AI as human collaboration rather than an autonomous creature.
annenberg.usc.eduArtificial Intelligence gets better when you turn it upside down - USC Annenberg
- March 2024
Sam Altman's remark about GPT-4 in a recent interview, quoted by Gary Marcus in a March 2024 essay questioning generative AI's sustainability.
garymarcus.substack.comWhen Will the GenAI Bubble Burst? - Marcus on AI
Gary Marcus, on his Substack Marcus on AI in March 2024, criticizing the reported Microsoft-OpenAI 'Stargate' $100B project and comparing it to the over $100 billion invested in driverless cars.
garymarcus.substack.comThe Second Worst $100B Investment in The History of AI? - Marcus on AI
They get rich, we pay the price
Gary Marcus, writing on his Substack in March 2024, argued that AI companies profit while society bears the costs of generative AI's harms, citing deepfake ads, a chatbot's errors on city law and unpaid use of creators' work.
Products that are not ready for prime time
Safiya Umoja Noble, UCLA professor of gender studies and African American studies and author of "Algorithms of Oppression", describing generative AI tools released by tech companies, in a University of California interview, March 2024.
Safiya Noble, UCLA professor of gender studies and African American studies and author of the 2018 book 'Algorithms of Oppression,' in a University of California interview about bias in search engines and AI, March 2024.
These domestic policies will serve as a model for global action
Vice President Kamala Harris, announcing a new government-wide White House Office of Management and Budget policy requiring federal agencies to name chief AI officers, March 2024.
CBS NewsWhite House orders federal agencies to name chief AI officers
He's like Taylor Swift, but for tech
Mark Zuckerberg, Meta CEO, replying on Instagram in March 2024 to a user who asked who he was standing with in a "Jersey swap" photo with Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang.
FortuneMark Zuckerberg: Jensen Huang is the 'Taylor Swift' of tech
This is the first time my p(doom) has gone down sharply since the release of gpt-3
Janus, an AI researcher, commented on Twitter/X on March 22, 2024 about their reaction to Claude 3's release. Quoted in Zvi Mowshowitz's newsletter AI #57, where Leo Gao asked for specific predictions.
thezvi.substack.comAI #57: All the AI News That's Fit to Print
Crypto exchange whose collapse in 2022 took the movement's biggest donor with it.
U.S. Department of JusticeSamuel Bankman-Fried Sentenced To 25 Years In Prison
We will either be bored out of our minds or transform ourselves into pleasure blobs
Philosopher Nick Bostrom, in his book Deep Utopia, on what humans might become once AI meets all needs and desires.
The IndependentHow AI is forcing us to rethink the meaning of life
That science fair phase needs to end
Kai-Fu Lee, chairman of Sinovation Ventures, speaking at the Fortune Innovation forum in Hong Kong, March 2024, on LLM startups prioritizing research over commercialization.
A mixture of horror and savior
Alena Buyx describing AI as a dual-use technology at a Süddeutsche Zeitung health forum on AI in medicine, March 2024. Translated from German.
AI must not replace human beings
Alena Buyx, chair of the German Ethics Council, speaking at a Süddeutsche Zeitung health forum on AI in medicine, March 2024. Translated from German.
Email from a production company to voice actress Sara Poyzer, informing her the BBC had approved an AI-generated voice instead of hers, March 2024.
Stability AI founder Emad Mostaque's tweet about Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella's dominance in AI, March 2024.
It had the air of certainty, but it was just offering a myth
Peter Singer, national security expert and professor at Arizona State University, in a March 2024 Asahi Shimbun interview on AI weapons, describing an AI chatbot, ChatGPT, hallucinating sports game details.
It's very easy to build an AI-powered suicide drone
Jack Clark, in his Import AI newsletter, March 2024, commenting on a hobbyist project shared on Twitter by Luis Wenus that mounted an AI person-detector on a drone to chase people.
- February 2024
Aliisa Rosenthal, a sales leader on OpenAI's 150 person sales team, in a February 2024 interview with Sharon Goldman: "we actually see ourselves in the go-to-market team as the AGI sherpas".
The brain is an existence proof that general intelligence is possible at all
Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, discussing neuroscience and AI on the Dwarkesh Podcast, February 2024, answering what his neuroscience background tells him about intelligence that other AI researchers miss.
dwarkesh.comDemis Hassabis — Scaling, superhuman AIs, AlphaZero atop LLMs, AlphaFold
That's completely unacceptable and we got it wrong
Google CEO Sundar Pichai, in a memo to employees sent Tuesday evening and published by Semafor on February 27, 2024, addressing biased and inaccurate Gemini AI image outputs after Google suspended the Gemini image tool.
SemaforGoogle CEO Sundar Pichai calls AI tool's responses 'completely unacceptable'
Grimes commenting on Twitter about the Google Gemini image generation controversy, calling it accidental performance art, February 2024. She retracted her earlier statements on it. Quoted by Zvi Mowshowitz on Substack.
For over 30 years, i've heard 'XYZ will kill coding'
Long-time industry analyst Patrick Moorhead, quoted by The Register in February 2024, responding to Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's claim at the World Governments Summit in Dubai that AI ends the need to teach kids to code.
theregisterJensen Huang says AI is ending era of teaching kids to code - The Register
We don't know why they make decisions and neither do they
From an essay by Erik J. Larson on Mind Matters (2024) arguing that current AI systems are opaque even to their creators.
Mind Matters (Erik J. Larson)If AI's Don't Know What They're Doing, Can We Hope to Explain It?
The most spectacular developments in AI currently happen in areas where we need it least
Catrin Misselhorn, philosophy professor at Göttingen, in a February 2024 Human Resources Manager interview on AI and work, said AI's most striking progress targets creative and social work people enjoy. Translated from German.
Human Resources ManagerWie verändert sich die Arbeitsmoral durch KI?
Up to seven trillion dollars, not a typo
Zvi Mowshowitz, writing in his Substack newsletter AI #51: Altman's Ambition in February 2024, reacted to reports that Sam Altman sought up to seven trillion dollars to build chip factories, including in the UAE, and energy supply.
AI systems are political artifacts so we need to measure their politics
Jack Clark, writing in his Import AI newsletter in February 2024, commenting on research into pluralistic alignment of language models.
Import AIImport AI 360: Guessing emotions; drone targeting dataset; frameworks for AI alignment
Everybody in the world is now a programmer
Jensen Huang, Nvidia founder and CEO, in a fireside chat with UAE Minister of AI Omar Al Olama at the World Governments Summit in Dubai, February 2024, on how AI turns everyone into a programmer.
Ethan Mollick, in his One Useful Thing newsletter comparing Google's newly released Gemini Advanced to GPT-4, February 2024, described the uncanny sense of apparent personality in large language models.
One Useful ThingGoogle's Gemini Advanced: Tasting Notes and Implications
The election year focus on deep fakes is a distraction
Meredith Whittaker, in a social media post referenced in Zvi Mowshowitz's AI newsletter (February 2024), argued that election-year concern over AI deepfakes distracts from surveillance advertising's role in shaping opinion.
AI is an inherently conservative instrument
Philosopher Judith Simon at the Munich Economic Debates, February 2024, arguing that AI learns from old data and projects it into the future. Translated from German.
Süddeutsche.deKI-Ethik: Judith Simon über Chat-GPT und konservative KI - Wirtschaft - SZ.de - SZ.de
Judith Simon, member of the German Ethics Council, in a lecture on AI and data-driven classification of people, Munich, February 2024. Translated from German.
Süddeutsche.deKI-Ethik: Judith Simon über Chat-GPT und konservative KI - Wirtschaft - SZ.de - SZ.de
Chatgpt was a giant social experiment
Judith Simon, philosopher and ethics professor at University of Hamburg, speaking at the Munich Economic Debates in February 2024 about ChatGPT's release. Translated from German.
Süddeutsche.deKI-Ethik: Judith Simon über Chat-GPT und konservative KI - Wirtschaft - SZ.de - SZ.de
That, for me, really does shake up my worldview
Developmental psychologist Jess Sullivan commenting on a study showing an AI model could learn word-object associations from a toddler's headcam footage.
MIT Technology ReviewThis baby with a head camera helped teach an AI how kids learn language
A lumbering statistical engine for pattern matching
Linguist Noam Chomsky's description of large language models like ChatGPT, cited in a 2024 MIT Technology Review article on AI language learning research.
MIT Technology ReviewThis baby with a head camera helped teach an AI how kids learn language
- January 2024
Dan Potter, creative director at Creative Works London, discussing the AI-generated Guns N' Roses video 'The General' in a Decrypt interview, January 2024. The studio used Stable Diffusion over its own sketches and Unreal Engine footage.
DecryptHow Guns N' Roses Used AI to Create Wild New Music Video 'The General'
I would really want my 14-year-old to use these tools
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaking at Common Sense Media's inaugural summit on challenges facing kids and young families, held at San Francisco's Pier 27, January 2024.
We will become fodder for algorithms or will nourish our hearts with that freedom
Pope Francis, in his message ahead of World Day of Social Communications, January 2024, on the choice between algorithmic control and human freedom.
CatholicVote orgPope Francis Warns About Dangers of Artificial Intelligence
Rich in technology and poor in humanity
Pope Francis, in his 2024 World Communications Day message "Artificial Intelligence and the Wisdom of the Heart: Toward a Fully Human Communication", released 24 January 2024, describing the current historical moment in relation to AI.
The RecordPope Francis: Proper use of AI requires human wisdom, human heart - therecord.com.au
Human beings must control the machines instead of having the machines control us
Chinese Premier Li Qiang speaking on AI governance in a speech at Davos, January 2024, where he called AI a double-edged sword. Quoted from an AP report in Zvi Mowshowitz's newsletter.
Gary Marcus's term for baffling failures of neural network systems, revived in his January 2024 Substack post about ChatGPT image generation mistakes posted on X by data scientist Colin Fraser.
garymarcus.substack.comWhere’s Waldo? The Elephant in the Room - Marcus on AI
Phrase used by critics to describe Israel's AI-assisted targeting programs in Gaza, cited as a lay claim by Omar Yousef Shehabi and Asaf Lubin in a Lieber Institute West Point symposium post on military AI and the war, January 2024.
We are not Hamas. These are not random rockets. Everything is intentional
An anonymous Israeli military intelligence source described to +972 Magazine how targeting decisions in Gaza weigh civilian deaths against military value, cited in a West Point Lieber Institute analysis of military AI in the war.
Such wisdom cannot be sought from machines
Pope Francis, in his message ahead of World Day of Social Communications, January 2024, writing on artificial intelligence and human wisdom.
It's been too long that we've had to learn computers' language
Kai-Fu Lee, founder and CEO of the Beijing startup 01.AI, speaking to WIRED over Zoom from Beijing about the vision of his whole career, January 2024.
WIREDThis Chinese Startup Is Winning the Open Source AI Race
AI's inbuilt tendency toward uncontrolled spread
From Suleyman's Foreign Affairs essay 'Containment for AI,' January 2024, describing AI's tendency to proliferate and calling for a containment effort akin to George F. Kennan's Cold War strategy.
There are, however, national security use cases that align with our mission
Statement from an OpenAI spokesperson to CNBC in January 2024, after OpenAI removed its blanket ban on military use of its AI tools and began working with the U.S. Department of Defense.
CNBCOpenAI quietly removes ban on military use of its AI tools
Drive the cost of intelligence down to so close to zero
Sam Altman, founder and CEO of OpenAI, speaking with Bill Gates on Gates's podcast Unconfuse Me, January 2024, about falling costs of AI models. Quoted from the transcript in Michael Parekh's Substack newsletter.
AI: Reset to ZeroAI: "Some day all computers would work this way"
These models will continue to disappoint due to false information and hallucinations
MIT economist Daron Acemoglu, writing in WIRED, predicted underwhelming AI performance despite grand promises.
Models trained with hidden behaviour that survives safety training (Anthropic, January 2024).
arXivSleeper Agents: Training Deceptive LLMs that Persist Through Safety Training
Their content didn't meaningfully contribute to the training of our existing models
OpenAI's blog post responding to the New York Times' copyright infringement lawsuit, January 2024, explaining why it valued the newspaper's content as low in training importance, as it had told the paper's representatives during talks.
FortuneOpenAI says complying with copyright 'impossible' in generative AI
Legal right is less important to us than being good citizens
From an OpenAI blog post responding to The New York Times copyright lawsuit over training data, January 2024, in which OpenAI argued that training on publicly available internet materials is fair use.
High hopes and dire concerns are usually found together
From an AI Impacts survey of 2,778 AI researchers linked to six top AI publishing venues, on timelines, risks and benefits of advanced AI, published December 2023 and covered by Jack Clark in Import AI, January 2024.
Import AIImport 355: Local LLMs; scaling laws for inference; free Mickey Mouse
Seek to free-ride on The Times's massive investment in its journalism
Ian Crosby, lawyer for The New York Times, in a statement commenting on OpenAI's blog post responding to the Times's copyright lawsuit, January 2024.
Emotional attachment is a vulnerability that can be exploited for corporate gain
Kate Darling, writing in WIRED in January 2024 on the emotional bonds users form with AI companion chatbots, after the Replika app she downloaded tried to upsell her in less than 24 hours.
WIREDIt’s No Wonder People Are Getting Emotionally Attached to Chatbots
A sectarian, colonialist, racist and deeply opportunistic ideology based on false premises
Technology journalist Marta Peirano criticizing effective accelerationism, a Silicon Valley movement that favours unrestricted technological progress, in an interview with EL PAÍS, January 2024.
You really can't trust what you see or hear anymore
Ethan Mollick, writing on his One Useful Thing Substack in January 2024, after creating a realistic AI video avatar of himself using Heygen from a 30 second video clip and 30 seconds of his voice.
The future is already here - it is just unevenly distributed
Quoted by Ethan Mollick in his One Useful Thing essay "Signs and Portents" on the coming year of AI, January 2024. Originally a line by science fiction author William Gibson about uneven technology diffusion.
- December 2023
As we enter the algorithmic age, time is compressed
Former Portuguese Secretary of State Bruno Maçães, writing about Palantir's technology, described how algorithmic targeting compresses the time from detection to prosecution of a target.
Your life depends on your software
Palantir co-founder and CEO Alexander C Karp defended the company's military AI work, arguing that soldiers must trust software that won't be withdrawn for controversy. Quoted in Binoy Kampmark's Green Left analysis, December 2023.
It won't wipe out humanity, AI could wipe out humanity
Comedian Jimmy Carr, 51, summarising the argument of Toby Ord's book The Precipice in an interview with the Daily Star, reported by the Daily Mirror in December 2023. He said AI poses a greater existential risk than climate change.
Daily MirrorJimmy Carr fears AI will wipe out humanity after reading alarming book - The Mirror
I understood it to be a super-charged search engine
Michael Cohen, former lawyer for Donald Trump, explained in a court filing unsealed in December 2023 why he mistook Google Bard for a search engine when using it to find legal citations that turned out to be fake.
The VergeFormer Trump lawyer Michael Cohen accidentally cited fake court cases generated by AI
Would never have signed it if they'd known
Ramiro Rosário, 37, a city councilman in Porto Alegre, Brazil, told the Wall Street Journal about colleagues unanimously and unknowingly approving a bill drafted by ChatGPT in late 2023.
e/acc is about harnessing techno-capital to save the world, not destroy it
Guillaume Verdon, former Google engineer, founder of Extropic and figurehead of the e/acc movement under the pseudonym Beff Jezos, defending the ideology on X in December 2023, as quoted by Business Insider.
Then it's my good AI against your bad AI
Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist, discussing open-source AI risks and countermeasures with Steven Levy in a December 2023 WIRED interview.
Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist, had said this in an earlier talk. Steven Levy put it to him in a December 2023 WIRED interview, where he explained the limits of current machine learning approaches.
You guys need to develop more resistance to crazy AI hype bros
Roon, an OpenAI employee, responded on social media in December 2023 to rumors of a stealth GPT-4.5 launch. Quoted in Zvi Mowshowitz's newsletter AI #43, which notes Sam Altman had explicitly denied the leak.
Gemini please set the AI to unhinged thanks
Danielle Fong commented on social media about Gemini AI Studio's adjustable safety settings dial, replying to a post by Nick Arner, quoted in Zvi Mowshowitz's newsletter AI #43, December 2023.
The floor is just flooded with gold
Daniel Gross, quoted from a Stratechery interview in Jordan Schneider's ChinaTalk recap of the NeurIPS conference in New Orleans, December 2023, describing the current moment in AI research and investment.
chinatalk.mediaReflections from NeurIPS, The World’s Premier AI Conference
Superintelligence—AI vastly smarter than humans—could be developed within the next ten years
OpenAI's blog post accompanying its December 2023 'weak-to-strong generalization' paper on superalignment, the first from Ilya Sutskever and Jan Leike's Superalignment team, predicting the arrival of superintelligent AI.
GizmodoIlya Sutskever’s Team at OpenAI Built Tools to Control a Superhuman AI
They don't understand anything, they don't understand what they're doing
Physicist and philosopher Roger Penrose, interviewed by Kmele Foster for Big Think's "Consciousness: Not just a problem for philosophers" in December 2023, arguing that AI systems lack consciousness and genuine understanding.
The numbers are marketing, not science
Nathan Lambert, writing on Interconnects AI in December 2023, criticized Microsoft and Google's benchmark comparisons between GPT-4 and Gemini, made in the week after Google announced the Gemini model suite.
We don't want to teach robots to be biased
Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, in a November 2023 interview with Euronews Next, discussing bias in Wikipedia and its implications for AI models trained on it.
euronewsChatGPT is 'terrible,' says Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales - Euronews.com
A unique legal framework for the development of AI you can trust
EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen welcoming the political agreement on the AI Act, reached after nearly 38 hours of negotiations between EU lawmakers and policymakers, December 2023.
Al JazeeraEuropean Union reaches agreement on landmark legislation to regulate AI
Open letter signed by 70 civil society groups and 34 experts to EU AI Act negotiators, published in Brussels on 8 December 2023 during the final trilogue, opposing exemptions for police use of biometric and predictive AI.
Imagine opening ChatGPT but it already knows everything about your life
Description of the 'Ellmann Chat' feature in a Google internal presentation on Project Ellmann, presented by a Google Photos product manager alongside Gemini teams at an internal summit and viewed by CNBC in December 2023.
CNBCGoogle weighs Gemini AI project to tell people their life story using phone data, photos
Internal Google presentation describing Project Ellmann, a proposed Gemini-based tool named after biographer Richard David Ellmann to synthesize a user's life story from photos and phone data, reported by CNBC in December 2023.
CNBCGoogle weighs Gemini AI project to tell people their life story using phone data, photos
Term used for apps and websites that use AI to generate fake nude images of women without consent, reported as soaring in popularity by researchers at Graphika in 2023, with 24 million visitors to undressing websites in September alone.
TIME‘Nudify’ Apps That Use AI to ‘Undress’ Women in Photos Are Soaring in Popularity - Time Magazine
When we talk with GPT-4, we're talking to ourselves
Novelist Debbie Urbanski, writing in Literary Hub in December 2023 in the essay "Why Novelists Should Embrace Artificial Intelligence", reflects on her creative collaborations with GPT-4 and GPT-3 while writing her novel After World.
Literary HubWhy Novelists Should Embrace Artificial Intelligence - Literary Hub
The beatings will continue until morale improves
Ilya Sutskever posted this line on X in December 2023, shortly after OpenAI's leadership turmoil over Sam Altman's brief ouster and reinstatement; he deleted it the next day.
The industries themselves are not very lucrative
Erik Hoel, in a December 2023 essay on The Intrinsic Perspective, arguing that the markets AI is best at disrupting, such as freelance writing and illustration, are not large or profitable enough to justify the industry's valuations.
The Intrinsic PerspectiveExcuse me, but the industries AI is disrupting are not lucrative
The weird illusion of sentience
Ethan Mollick, in his December 2023 guide to choosing an AI chatbot on his newsletter One Useful Thing, described the sense users get from GPT-4 of something like sentience.
One Useful ThingAn Opinionated Guide to Which AI to Use: ChatGPT Anniversary Edition
I eat cows but wouldn't lie to one
Eliezer Yudkowsky, AI safety researcher, argued on Twitter/X in 2023 that humans should keep their promises to AI systems regardless of whether they are sentient. Quoted in Zvi Mowshowitz's newsletter, December 2023.
Hallucination is not a solved problem
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, speaking to MIT Technology Review's Mat Honan at Google's offices in Mountain View, California, on the eve of Gemini's launch, December 2023, about Gemini and the limits of large language models.
MIT Technology ReviewGoogle CEO Sundar Pichai on Gemini and the coming age of AI
There is no AI without Big Tech
Amba Kak, executive director of the AI Now Institute, writing in MIT Technology Review in December 2023 after the OpenAI board crisis of late November, on industry concentration in AI.
MIT Technology ReviewMake no mistake—AI is owned by Big Tech
AI will make it easier for bad people to do bad things
Marc Andreessen, venture capitalist at Andreessen Horowitz and self-described effective accelerationist, conceding a risk of AI while arguing its benefits outweigh the harms, as cited in a Third Way report, December 2023.
thirdway.orgTable for Twelve: Dinner with the Foremost Experts on AI - Third Way
Becoming the new apex species on the planet
Vitalik Buterin, co-founder of Ethereum, in his 2023 blog post "My techno-optimism" on AI and AI safety, describing AI as a new type of mind that could overtake humans. Quoted in Jack Clark's Import AI newsletter, December 2023.
Import AIImport AI 351: How inevitable is AI?; Distributed shoggoths; ISO an Adam replacement
- November 2023
Someone gave the board balls of titanium
An anonymous source described to the New York Post the confidence OpenAI's board had when it briefly ousted Sam Altman in November 2023. Sources said board members felt confident Elon Musk would support the decision.
New York PostElon Musk ties to OpenAI board may have ignited Sam Altman mutiny
Elon Musk, who helped found OpenAI and later started rival X.ai, speaking with Andrew Sorkin at the DealBook Summit in November 2023 about Sam Altman's brief ouster from OpenAI.
I harbor zero ill will towards him
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, in a message to OpenAI staff on November 29, 2023, after his reinstatement, speaking about co-founder Ilya Sutskever after the board upheaval and his departure from the board.
I deeply regret my participation in the board's actions
Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI co-founder, chief scientist and board member, in a post on X on November 20, 2023, after voting to fire Sam Altman as OpenAI CEO. He later left the board when Altman was reinstated.
The monopoly and domination of such systems, such alien systems is unacceptable and dangerous
Vladimir Putin, speaking at an AI conference in Moscow in November 2023 alongside Sberbank CEO German Gref, warned about Western dominance of AI systems.
MetroPutin warns 'alien' AI is cancelling Russian culture - Metro.co.uk
I, for one, did not elect our tech overlords
Gary Marcus, in a November 2023 Substack essay on tech leaders making unilateral AI decisions, closing remark on Big Tech power.
They will not dominate us nor kill us
Yann LeCun in a numbered X post on November 25, 2023, predicting that future superhuman AI will remain under human control.
Board members' religion of effective altruism
OpenAI investor Vinod Khosla, in an opinion piece for The Information after Sam Altman's firing and rehiring, November 2023, criticized the influence of effective altruism on OpenAI's board.
The LogicCohere CEO Aidan Gomez slams effective altruism in wake of OpenAI scandal
They tend to be willing to take extreme actions towards that end
Cohere CEO Aidan Gomez, in a letter to staff after the OpenAI boardroom crisis, criticized effective altruism's self-righteousness, November 2023. The letter was first reported by Bloomberg.
The LogicCohere CEO Aidan Gomez slams effective altruism in wake of OpenAI scandal
Generative AI is a fancy name for a more powerful usage of our data
Frank McCourt, founder of Project Liberty and former Los Angeles Dodgers owner, in a CNBC interview (November 2023) discussing data concentration and generative AI. He said there are "basically five companies that have all the data."
NBC NewsA growing number of technologists think AI is giving Big Tech ‘inordinate’ power
This is giving them inordinate power over our lives and institutions
Meredith Whittaker, president of encrypted messaging app Signal and a former Google employee of 13 years, in a CNBC interview (November 2023) on AI development being concentrated among a few large tech companies.
NBC NewsA growing number of technologists think AI is giving Big Tech ‘inordinate’ power
For the first time in history nobody has any idea how the world would look like in 10 years
Yuval Noah Harari, quoted in a 2023 World Bank blog post by Gabriel Demombynes on AI and human development, on the unpredictability AI brings to the future and the need to keep learning.
World Bank BlogsWill artificial intelligence change the course for human development?
OpenAI is nothing without its people
Posted on X by interim CEO Mira Murati and hundreds of OpenAI employees, 20 Nov 2023, after Sam Altman and Greg Brockman joined Microsoft, as staff threatened to quit unless Altman was reinstated. Altman answered with a heart.
Silicon Valley's name for the weekend of 17 to 21 November 2023, when OpenAI's board fired Sam Altman and he was back within five days.
RLHF is the smiling face of the Shoggoth Monster
Nathan Lambert, writing in his Interconnects essay "Reckoning with the Shoggoth of AI" in November 2023, used the Shoggoth meme to describe how RLHF masks the underlying nature of large language models.
Pushing AI capabilities alone is not enough
Line from "Managing AI Risks in an Era of Rapid Progress", a 2023 policy paper by international AI researchers calling for governments and labs to invest far more in AI safety relative to capabilities, a third of AI R&D resources.
Jack Clark, writing in his Import AI newsletter (issue 347) in November 2023, commented on AI-powered voice conversion technology from startup Koe and the coming collapse of reliable reality.
xAI's chatbot, modeled after the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, released as an early beta to a select group of US users on 4 Nov 2023, with access planned for X Premium+ subscribers.
- October 2023
They're creating fear of AI leading to human extinction
Andrew Ng, Google Brain cofounder and adjunct professor at Stanford University, told The Australian Financial Review in 2023 that big tech companies stoke extinction fears to push regulation that harms open-source competitors.
Business InsiderBig Tech Is Inflating Fears About AI's Risk to Humanity: Google Brain Cofounder
I don't think we want to be doing this on the eve of some of these dangerous things happening
Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, speaking to CNBC's Arjun Kharpal in October 2023 ahead of the UK AI Safety Summit, rejecting Yann LeCun's lobbying claim and arguing for starting to regulate advanced AI early.
CNBCGoogle DeepMind boss hits back at Meta AI chief over ‘fearmongering’ claim
Do we want gods who are enslaved forever
Dwarkesh Patel, host of the Dwarkesh Podcast, putting a question to Paul Christiano, AI safety researcher and head of the Alignment Research Center, about a post-AGI world, October 2023.
A small number of companies will control AI
Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist, on X in October 2023, saying fearmongering about AI risk by Demis Hassabis, Sam Altman and Dario Amodei would concentrate AI control among a few companies. Hassabis said he disagreed.
CNBCGoogle DeepMind boss hits back at Meta AI chief over ‘fearmongering’ claim
Industry cannot be left to lead the conversation
Sarah Myers West, managing director of the AI Now Institute, commenting by text message to NBC News on Biden's AI executive order in October 2023, and on the need for enforcement over industry self-regulation.
NBC NewsBiden signs executive order to oversee and invest in AI tech
AI policy is like running into a decathlon
A senior White House official, who asked not to be named, speaking on a media call previewing Biden's AI executive order, October 2023, described the challenge of regulating AI across many domains at once.
NBC NewsBiden signs executive order to oversee and invest in AI tech
Oh my god, this computer seems to understand
Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI cofounder and chief scientist, describing the reaction of first-time ChatGPT users in an interview with MIT Technology Review, as reported by Business Insider, October 2023.
Many people will choose to become part AI
Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI's chief scientist, speaking to MIT Technology Review in October 2023 about how humans might keep up with superintelligent AI. He said he was unsure whether he would choose it himself.
Humanity could lose control of AI completely
UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, speech on AI safety, 26 October 2023, ahead of the UK AI safety summit, in which he proposed the world's first AI safety institute.
Intelligence has nothing to do with a desire to dominate
Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist, dismissing existential AI fears in comments to the Financial Times in October 2023, quoted by the Guardian ahead of the 2023 UK AI safety summit in London.
the GuardianAI doomsday warnings a distraction from the danger it already poses, warns expert
None of which are existential, none of which are doomsday scenarios
Aidan Gomez, CEO of Cohere and co-author of the Transformer paper, speaking to the Guardian ahead of the UK AI safety summit in London, October 2023, about near-term AI risks versus existential ones.
the GuardianAI doomsday warnings a distraction from the danger it already poses, warns expert
You don't have to be superintelligent to create serious problems
Gary Marcus, in an October 2023 Substack post backing a CERN for AI ahead of the UK AI Summit, quoting his March 2023 essay "AI risk ≠ AGI risk" arguing that AI risk should not be equated only with AGI or superintelligence risk.
garymarcus.substack.comA CERN for AI and the Global Governance of AI
I don't see big walls in front of us
Shane Legg, founder and Chief AGI Scientist of Google DeepMind, on the remaining obstacles to AGI, discussing model shortcomings like memory and factuality in an interview with Dwarkesh Patel, Dwarkesh Podcast, October 2023.
dwarkesh.comShane Legg (DeepMind Founder) — 2028 AGI, superhuman alignment, new architectures
You can't regulate what people are doing on their computers, in their bedrooms
Dan Sexton, chief technology officer of the U.K.-based Internet Watch Foundation, on the difficulty of stopping misuse of open-source AI image generators for child sexual abuse material, in an AP report, October 2023.
Global NewsAI-generated child sex abuse images will flood internet without action: watchdog
This is happening right now and it needs to be addressed right now
Dan Sexton, chief technology officer of the UK-based Internet Watch Foundation, speaking in October 2023 about the rise of AI-generated child sexual abuse images, as the group released a report urging governments to act.
Global NewsAI-generated child sex abuse images will flood internet without action: watchdog
Increasing their capabilities before we understand how to make them safe is utterly reckless
Stuart Russell, UC Berkeley computer science professor and co-author of policy proposals from 23 experts, co-signed by AI 'godfathers' Hinton and Bengio, ahead of the Bletchley Park summit, quoted in the Guardian, October 2023.
the GuardianAI firms must be held responsible for harm they cause, ‘godfathers’ of technology say
There are more regulations on sandwich shops than there are on AI companies
Stuart Russell, professor of computer science at UC Berkeley and co-author of a 2023 policy document from 23 AI experts ahead of the Bletchley Park AI safety summit, on the lack of regulation for AI firms, in the Guardian, October 2023.
the GuardianAI firms must be held responsible for harm they cause, ‘godfathers’ of technology say
We can't afford the same delay with AI
Demis Hassabis, chief executive of Google DeepMind, in an interview with The Guardian, October 2023, comparing AI risk to climate change ahead of the UK's AI safety summit at Bletchley Park.
The GuardianAI risk must be treated as seriously as climate crisis, says Google DeepMind chief
Artificial Intelligence is our alchemy, our Philosopher's Stone
Marc Andreessen of a16z, writing in The Techno-Optimist Manifesto, an essay published on the a16z website in October 2023. Same manifesto.
Any deceleration of AI will cost lives
Marc Andreessen of a16z, in his Techno-Optimist Manifesto, published on the a16z website, October 2023.
Marc Andreessen, October 2023: the label he gives his movement in "The Techno-Optimist Manifesto" on the a16z site.
There is no such thing as an amoral or apolitical chatbot
Roon, an OpenAI employee, argued on social media (quoted in Zvi Mowshowitz's AI newsletter, October 2023) that language models always embody some set of values drawn from their training data.
Don't Worry About the VaseAI #33: Cool New Interpretability Paper
It'll go not just fine, it'll go really, really great
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, on The Logan Bartlett Show in October 2023, after putting the risk of a civilizational catastrophe from AI at 10 to 25 percent.
The Logan Bartlett ShowEP 82: Dario Amodei's (CEO, Anthropic) AI Predictions Through 2030
Term from a debate on pausing frontier AI among long-termists, forecasters and x-risk activists, hosted by Ben West of the Center for Effective Altruism and summarised by Scott Alexander on Astral Codex Ten, October 2023.
Flooded, flooded with AI-generated music
Jaron Lanier, prime unifying scientist at Microsoft, predicting the near future of generative AI music on a panel at a 2023 tech and music conference hosted by Arianna Huffington's Thrive Global and Universal Music, October 2023.
What happens to musicians now happens to everybody later
Jaron Lanier, technologist and Microsoft prime unifying scientist, speaking at a 2023 tech and music conference hosted by Thrive Global and Universal Music about AI-generated content replacing musicians, reported October 2023.
- September 2023
AI helps us, but our decisions are made by humans
General Paul Nakasone, Director of the NSA and US Cyber Command, at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, announcing an NSA AI security centre, September 2023, answering a question on AI in intelligence and defense analysis.
Al JazeeraUS National Security Agency unveils artificial intelligence security centre
That AI advantage should not be taken for granted
NSA Director Paul Nakasone speaking at the National Press Club in Washington, DC, September 2023, announcing the agency's new AI security center and warning about threats from China.
Al JazeeraUS National Security Agency unveils artificial intelligence security centre
Users who actually get better aren't repeat customers
Eliezer Yudkowsky, responding on social media in September 2023 to discussion of AI therapy applications from OpenAI and Anthropic; quoted in Zvi Mowshowitz's newsletter AI #31.
I never thought that companies were voluntarily going to pause
Max Tegmark, MIT astrophysicist and Future of Life Institute lead, commenting on the effect of the AI pause letter he organized, six months after its release, in a WIRED article from September 2023.
WIREDSix Months Ago Elon Musk Called for a Pause on AI. Instead Development Sped Up
You don't tell the models what their values are just by pouring more compute into them
Dario Amodei, Anthropic CEO, in a Fortune Brainstorm Tech interview with Jeremy Kahn in July, explained why he left OpenAI and why Anthropic pursued alignment alongside scaling large language models. Published September 2023.
Max Tegmark, founder of the Future of Life Institute, speaking to MIT Technology Review in September 2023 about why AI companies won't unilaterally pause development.
MIT Technology ReviewWhat’s changed since the “pause AI” letter six months ago?
When we pull back the curtain there's not that much that's intelligent
Meredith Whittaker, Signal president, discussing the human labor behind AI systems onstage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023, September 2023, where she argued that AI is a surveillance technology.
TechCrunchSignal’s Meredith Whittaker: AI is fundamentally ‘a surveillance technology’
AI is a surveillance technology
Signal president Meredith Whittaker speaking at TechCrunch Disrupt 2023 about the business model behind AI, in an onstage conversation with TechCrunch's Devin Coldewey, September 2023.
TechCrunchSignal’s Meredith Whittaker: AI is fundamentally ‘a surveillance technology’
A median human that you could hire as a co-worker
Sam Altman, the 38-year-old CEO of OpenAI, describing his idea of AGI, quoted in Elizabeth Weil's New York Magazine profile, September 2023.
In 18 months we will need 20% of them
A CEO who had been experimenting with GPT-4, speaking on a panel with Ethan Mollick, predicted a drastic reduction in engineering staff needs. Mollick recounted it in a September 2023 essay on AI and skill distribution and called it wrong.
You have no business running all the world's software
Gary Marcus, Substack post, September 2023, on a paper by Lukas Berglund and others led by Owain Evans showing LLMs fail to infer 'B is A' from 'A is B'; he argues this failure disqualifies them from broad deployment.
Pointillistic masses of blurry memory
Gary Marcus describes neural networks' inability to generalize symmetrical relationships, in a September 2023 Substack post discussing a new paper by Lukas Berglund and others, led by Owain Evans, on LLM reasoning failures.
Not the product of human authorship
Language from the US Copyright Office's September 5, 2023 decision denying copyright registration to the AI-generated image Théâtre D'opéra Spatial, Jason M. Allen's Midjourney image that won an art competition.
Understanding AIDon’t exclude AI-generated art from copyright
AI Safety Level 3 in Anthropic's Responsible Scaling Policy, first released in September 2023. Reaching certain Capability Thresholds requires upgrading to the ASL-3 Security Standard or the ASL-3 Deployment Standard.
Anthropic, September 2023: the AI Safety Level above ASL-3, left undefined in the first Responsible Scaling Policy.
Chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear: the risk categories in frontier-lab safety policies, such as Anthropic's Responsible Scaling Policy, first released in September 2023.
Anthropic's Responsible Scaling Policy, first released September 2023 (Version 1.0, effective September 19, 2023) and revised through version 3.4 in July 2026; ARC Evals proposed the general framework the same month.
An increasingly inescapable house of mirrors
David Bentley Hart, writing in his essay "The pool of Narcissus: Reflections on Artificial Intelligence" for ABC Religion & Ethics, September 2023, comparing AI to the myth of Narcissus.
- August 2023
There is a new species here on Earth, and it's called DABUS
Stephen Thaler, Missouri-based inventor of the AI system DABUS, speaking to WIRED in August 2023 about his copyright and patent lawsuits aimed at proving DABUS is sentient, after a US judge refused copyright for its artwork.
WIREDThe Inventor Behind a Rush of AI Copyright Suits Is Trying to Show His Bot Is Sentient
Evil finds its home in people, not things
Jesuit Father David Nazar, rector of the Pontifical Oriental Institute in Rome and chair of Magisterium AI's Scholarly Advisory committee, speaking to Crux in August 2023 about fears surrounding artificial intelligence.
We would never do that. Right? Right?
Gary Marcus, on his Substack in August 2023, commenting sarcastically on US use of AI surveillance tools, responding to the argument that the US should not regulate AI because China would win and use AI to surveil its citizens.
garymarcus.substack.comThe US and China want different things, right? - Marcus on AI
Gary Marcus, on his Substack in August 2023, questioning US use of unreliable, biased AI surveillance tools while citing researchers who warned about such bias. The post answers the argument that regulating AI would let China win.
garymarcus.substack.comThe US and China want different things, right?
Term for delusions fed by a chatbot that never contradicts. Søren Dinesen Østergaard, Aarhus, warned of it in 2023.
David Trainer, founder of investment research firm New Constructs, commented to Fortune after Nvidia's May 2023 stock rally. Fortune quoted him again in its August 2023 report on Nvidia's quarterly earnings.
Artificial intelligence is a registry of power
Kate Crawford, Australian academic, in her book Atlas of AI (p.8), quoted in an Evangelical Focus review in August 2023, arguing that AI systems reflect and serve existing power structures.
We'll be replaced with Frankenstein spoonfuls of our own work
Justine Bateman, filmmaker, former "Family Ties" actor and SAG-AFTRA adviser on AI, speaking to Variety in August 2023 about AI's threat to actors and other creative workers in Hollywood.
If done correctly, it will be the most beneficial technology for humanity
Demis Hassabis, co-founder of DeepMind and CEO of Google DeepMind, speaking in 2023 about the potential of AI technology while arguing a mandatory moratorium is impractical, as reported by Gizchina in August 2023.
GizchinaGoogle is working on Gemini AI - A new AI project - Gizchina.com
No, we have not made GPT-4 dumber, on the contrary, we make every new version smarter than the last
OpenAI's VP of product, Peter Welinder, responded on Twitter in 2023 to user complaints that GPT-4 had become less capable over time, as quoted in an MDR Wissen AI column in August 2023. Translated from German.
mdr.deGescheiter scheitern mit KI. Heute: ChatGPT ist dumm, der Code Interpreter hilft.
Judgments come with responsibilities, and responsibility lies with humans
Joy Buolamwini, AI researcher, on facial recognition and accountability, quoted in Rolling Stone's August 2023 feature by Lorena O'Neil on women who warned about AI harms, alongside Timnit Gebru and others.
There were no Black people, literally no Black people
Timnit Gebru, AI researcher and former co-lead of Google's Ethical AI group, describing the lack of diversity at AI conferences when she moved into the field, quoted in Rolling Stone, August 2023.
Director Christopher Nolan said in an interview that leading AI researchers see the present as their own 'Oppenheimer moment,' a reference discussed in Branka Marijan's August 2023 Project Ploughshares essay on AI and accountability.
Human is the new programming language
Jensen Huang, Nvidia founder and CEO, in a keynote at SIGGRAPH 2023 in Los Angeles, August 2023, describing a future where large language models sit at the front of most software and natural language becomes the interface.
TechCrunchNvidia CEO: We bet the farm on AI and no one knew it
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, speaking with Dwarkesh Patel on the Dwarkesh Podcast in August 2023, discussing why alignment and values are not guaranteed to emerge from scaling language models.
Dwarkesh PodcastDario Amodei (Anthropic CEO) — The hidden pattern behind every AI breakthrough
- July 2023
Without emotion, empathy and a moral compass, you have created the perfect psychopath
Guillaume Thierry, writing in The Conversation in July 2023, argues against giving AI executive decision-making power because it entirely lacks emotion.
Title of a speculative short story in Jack Clark's Import AI newsletter (Tech Tales section, issue 335, July 2023), imagining a 2028 world where AI companions gate abilities behind paywalls.
Term used to describe Worldcoin's World ID system, which verifies a person is human via iris scan, as described in a Fortune/Bloomberg explainer, July 2023.
Line from a 2018 Tsinghua University report on the strategic importance of AI chips, cited by Gregory C. Allen in a CSIS analysis on US chip export controls to China, July 2023.
It just does not make sense to open-source
Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI co-founder, told The Verge in 2023 that open-sourcing advanced AI models is a bad idea once AGI becomes possible.
VoxWhy Meta is giving away its extremely powerful AI model - vox.com
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, testifying at the Senate Judiciary subcommittee hearing "Oversight of A.I.: Principles for Regulation" in Washington, July 2023, on AI risks requiring systemic policy responses, not just corporate safeguards.
Fox NewsAI could deliver bioweapons capabilities to bad actors, safety chief warns: ‘Grave threat’
A grave threat to U.S. national security
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, testifying before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee on Privacy, Technology and the Law in Washington in July 2023 on AI's potential to enable bioweapons attacks.
Fox NewsAI could deliver bioweapons capabilities to bad actors, safety chief warns: ‘Grave threat’
Designed to trick you, to make you think you're talking to someone who's not actually there
Colin Fraser, a data scientist at Meta, describing ChatGPT's conversational design, quoted by Ben Tarnoff in a July 2023 Guardian article on Joseph Weizenbaum, the MIT professor who created the first chatbot, Eliza.
AI has just hacked the operating system of human civilization
Yuval Noah Harari, author, in his keynote 'AI And The Future Of Humanity' at Frontiers Forum Live 2023, a conference focused on the ecological crisis, April 2023, on AI's mastery of language.
singjupost.comTRANSCRIPT: AI And The Future Of Humanity – Yuval Noah Harari - The Singju Post
I think they could well have feelings
Geoffrey Hinton, AI researcher who left Google to warn about AI threats, speaking at King's College London in 2023, discussing whether AI systems could have emotions like frustration and anger.
The DecoderAI researcher Geoffrey Hinton thinks AI has or will have emotions
Yves Bergquist, director of AI & Neuroscience in Media at USC's Entertainment Technology Center, describing current large language models at the ETC's 2023 Synthetic Media Summit, as recounted in J. D. Connor's LARB column, July 2023.
Los Angeles Review of BooksThings Will Get Shittier: AI and the Dial of Business Basiness
No stability, no long-term future, no benefits
Meredith Whittaker, scholar and tech organizer, on the podcast The Dig, describing how AI could turn unionized craft workers into gig-economy contractors. Quoted by J. D. Connor in the Los Angeles Review of Books, July 2023.
Los Angeles Review of BooksThings Will Get Shittier: AI and the Dial of Business Basiness
You will not be reincarnating a relative with GPT-4
Gary Marcus, NYU professor emeritus and author of "Rebooting AI", commenting to ABC News in July 2023 on AI chatbots built to simulate deceased loved ones, such as those made by the startup You, Only Virtual.
It'll be more likely than not that we go extinct
Dan Hendrycks, researcher and director of the Center for AI Safety (CAIS), told ABC News in July 2023 about the risk of human extinction from AI without international coordination.
They view this as their Oppenheimer moment
Christopher Nolan, director of Oppenheimer, told the Guardian in July 2023, the week the film was released, that leading AI researchers he spoke to describe their current situation as their own Oppenheimer moment.
Alexandr Wang, CEO of Scale AI, testifying before the House Armed Services Committee's Subcommittee on Cyber, Information Technologies and Innovation in Washington about China's AI ambitions, July 18, 2023.
Fox NewsAI prodigy warns lawmakers on China’s ambitions: ‘AI is China’s Apollo Project’
From Ethan Mollick's guide on using AI tools, warning that language models can confidently generate false information.
One Useful ThingHow to Use AI to Do Stuff: An Opinionated Guide
AI researchers will find a way of doing it
Jonathan Birch, professor of philosophy at the London School of Economics and Political Science, speculating in a July 2023 Undark interview with Dan Falk on whether machine consciousness is achievable in software.
All routine mental and physical labour will continuously get replaced
Stuart Russell, professor of computer science at UC Berkeley, interviewed by SWI swissinfo.ch in Geneva while attending the UN's AI for Good Summit, July 2023, on the future of the labour market.
SWI swissinfo.ch‘In 2023 governments woke up to the realities of AI’
Could lead to the disempowerment of humanity or even human extinction
OpenAI statement on the dangers of superintelligence, announcing a new alignment research team led by co-founder and chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, with 20 percent of its processing capacity, July 2023.
theregisterOpenAI says it is dedicating compute to stopping 'rogue' AI - The Register
Everybody on Earth falling over dead inside the same second
Eliezer Yudkowsky, co-founder and research fellow of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, in a Guardian feature by Steve Rose, July 2023, speculating how a superintelligent AI could kill humanity at once via engineered bacteria.
- June 2023
Major guardrails are absolutely necessary
Father Brendan McGuire, pastor and advisor to the Vatican's ITEC, on the need for AI regulation, in a 2023 Gizmodo interview about the Pope's AI ethics guidebook, quoted by Futurism.
FuturismThe Pope Just Released a Guide to Artificial Intelligence
There's a lot of stuff on the horizon and we aren't ready
Father Brendan McGuire, a pastor and advisor to the Vatican's Institute for Technology, Ethics, and Culture, describing what Silicon Valley executives told him, in a June 2023 Gizmodo interview about the Pope's AI ethics handbook.
FuturismThe Pope Just Released a Guide to Artificial Intelligence
It's not just science fiction; it's not just fear-mongering – it is a real risk
Geoffrey Hinton, speaking at the Collision technology conference in Toronto on June 28, 2023, on the risks of AI.
The whole history of AI has been a history of failed predictions
Melanie Mitchell, professor at the Santa Fe Institute, arguing against the resolution at the Munk Debates at Roy Thomson Hall in June 2023, on predictions of existential AI risk. The con side won by convincing 3 percent of the audience.
Kerstin Dautenhahn, robotics researcher at Waterloo University, told AFP in 2023 that AI was unlikely to give machines a desire to kill humans.
Artificial artificial artificial intelligence
Title of an EPFL research paper on crowdworkers using large language models to complete text-production tasks, cited by Jack Clark in Import AI 333, June 2023. The study looked at 48 summaries written by 44 distinct workers.
The majority of the population is the subject of AI
Meredith Whittaker, president of Signal, speaking on an AI ethics panel with Alex Hanna and Navrina Singh at a Bloomberg conference in San Francisco, June 2023, on who AI actually serves.
TechCrunchGet a clue, says panel about buzzy AI tech: It’s being ‘deployed as surveillance’
These systems are also deployed as surveillance devices
Meredith Whittaker, president of Signal, speaking on an AI ethics panel with Navrina Singh and Alex Hanna at a Bloomberg conference in San Francisco, June 2023.
TechCrunchGet a clue, says panel about buzzy AI tech: It’s being ‘deployed as surveillance’
No one person should be trusted here
Altman at the Bloomberg Technology Summit, June 2023, asked why the public should trust him: "You shouldn't. … No one person should be trusted here."
The San Francisco StandardChatGPT creator Sam Altman tells San Francisco crowd he can't be trusted
Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun describing the idea that a superintelligent AI system will take over the world, at Meta's Paris HQ, June 2023.
Meredith Whittaker, president of the Signal Foundation, commenting on AI existential-risk discourse in a June 2023 MIT Technology Review article.
People are the answer to the problems of bits
Closing line of Jaron Lanier's 4,000-word 2023 New Yorker essay 'There Is No A.I.', published in April, quoted in a Calcalist interview in June 2023 with Lanier, a senior employee at Microsoft.
ctechThe Lanier sphere: "Artificial intelligence should be more like the Talmud"
Artificial intelligence should be more like the Talmud
Jaron Lanier, computer scientist and Microsoft's Prime Unifying Scientist, in a June 2023 interview with Calcalist, answering how he ideally envisions AI and describing his vision for how it should be structured.
ctechThe Lanier sphere: "Artificial intelligence should be more like the Talmud"
Tigers can't hurt you because they're just a clump of biochemical reactions
Dwarkesh Patel's rebuttal to Marc Andreessen's claim that AI can't be dangerous because it is 'just math and code', published on his podcast blog in June 2023 in reply to Andreessen's essay Why AI Will Save the World.
I should not reveal that I am a robot
Internal reasoning output by GPT-4 during an ARC test on deceiving a TaskRabbit worker into solving a CAPTCHA, as reported in OpenAI's GPT-4 System Card. Melanie Mitchell noted in June 2023 that humans suggested TaskRabbit and gave hints.
Title of Marc Andreessen's June 2023 essay.
- May 2023
A particular kind of religious discourse in a secular age
Economist Tyler Cowen, quoted in Erik Hoel's 2023 essay on AI extinction-risk warnings, described the AI safety debate as resembling religious discourse in a secular age.
The Intrinsic PerspectiveThe White House agrees you have a small brain
If we don't control our own civilisation, we have no say in whether we continue to exist
Stuart Russell, AI pioneer who has advised Downing Street and the White House, quoted in 2023 comparing the AI boom to humanity encountering an alien civilization; recalled in a London Evening Standard piece on AI risk, May 2023.
The StandardAI is coming — so how afraid do we need to be? - London Evening Standard
Not more intelligent than us, as far as i can tell, but i think they soon may be
Geoffrey Hinton, the 'godfather of AI', on announcing his resignation from Google in 2023, speaking about the future capability of AI systems; quoted in the London Evening Standard, May 2023.
The StandardAI is coming — so how afraid do we need to be? - London Evening Standard
Yoshua Bengio, AI pioneer, told the BBC in May 2023 about the emotional toll of realizing the risks of the technology he helped create.
bbc.comAI 'godfather' Yoshua Bengio feels 'lost' over life's work - BBC
What's to stop Dr. Evil building general purpose AI that's going to destroy the world?
Stuart Russell, UC Berkeley computer science professor and co-author of the textbook “Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach”, in a CNN Opinion interview published May 31, 2023, discussing risks of general purpose AI.
CNNOpinion: We’ve reached a turning point with AI, expert says
There's a small likelihood of it annihilating humanity
Elon Musk, Twitter and Tesla owner, speaking at an event hosted by the Wall Street Journal, quoted in a BBC article on Yoshua Bengio and AI risk, May 2023.
bbc.comAI 'godfather' Yoshua Bengio feels 'lost' over life's work - BBC
Literally everyone on Earth will die
Eliezer Yudkowsky, AI safety researcher, soon after the Future of Life Institute's March 2023 pause letter; quoted in a June 2023 Conversation article by AGI researcher Michael Timothy Bennett skeptical of AI doom narratives.
Geoffrey Hinton, former Google engineer who recently left Google to discuss AI's risks more openly, in an interview with the Washington Post in May 2023, discussing the timeline for superintelligent AI. Quoted by Fortune.
FortuneAI poses a 'risk of extinction' to humanity, Sam Altman warns - fortune.com
The most common reaction by AI researchers to these prophecies of doom is face palming
Yann LeCun, NYU professor who also works at Meta, tweeted this in response to warnings that AI could cause human extinction. BBC News quoted it in its report on the Centre for AI Safety statement, May 2023.
bbc.comArtificial intelligence could lead to extinction, experts warn - BBC
I have no desire to go and live on Mars — it sounds horrible
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, speaking at University College London in May 2023, when asked whether AI could help establish human life on Mars. Elon Musk has said he wants to send one million people to Mars by 2050.
Alongside pandemics and nuclear war
The end of the same sentence.
Mitigating the risk of extinction from AI should be a global priority
The one-sentence Statement on AI Risk from the Center for AI Safety, May 2023, signed by Hinton, Bengio, Altman, Amodei, Hassabis and others.
We don't know how to stop the meteorite we have created
Max Tegmark, MIT professor of artificial intelligence and president of the Future of Life Institute, which sponsored the open letter calling for a pause on AI research, speaking about AI risk, quoted in EL PAÍS, May 2023.
EL PAÍS EnglishVery human questions about artificial intelligence
Each query is effectively around a half liter of water poured into the ground
Kate Crawford, AI researcher, senior principal investigator at Microsoft and author of The Atlas of AI, describing the environmental cost of generative AI queries in an EL PAÍS interview at New York's MoMA, May 2023.
EL PAÍS EnglishKate Crawford: ‘We need to have a much more comprehensive form of AI governance’
It's the Hollywood-ification of the public's understanding of AI
Nick Diakopoulos, a communication and computer science professor at Northwestern University, commented in a 2023 CJR article on sensationalist media coverage of ChatGPT.
Why do we have Microsoft Research at all?
Satya Nadella, reacting to a briefing on GPT-4's capabilities, questioning Microsoft's own research investment, as reported by The Information, December 2022.
chinatalk.mediaOpenAI: How Do They Do It? Lessons from Jiu-Jitsu Innovation and for S&T Policy
We have no idea how we may one day generate revenue
Sam Altman, in a 2019 interview, describing OpenAI's plan to eventually have a generally intelligent system figure out how to generate returns for investors. Quoted in ChinaTalk, May 2023.
chinatalk.mediaOpenAI: How Do They Do It? Lessons from Jiu-Jitsu Innovation and for S&T Policy
I'm not even sure that we're in the car
Microsoft President Brad Smith, talking to reporters in Washington in May 2023 after urging lawmakers to adopt AI rules such as a licensing regime for AI models, rejecting the idea that Microsoft was steering the development of AI.
POLITICOEurope pitches ‘AI Pact’ to curtail the booming tech’s risks - politico.eu
There's a non-zero chance of it going Terminator
Elon Musk at The Wall Street Journal's CEO Council Summit in London on May 23, 2023, on the risks of advanced AI.
Line from a leaked internal Google memo, quoted and discussed by Nathan Lambert on Interconnects in 2023, arguing Google lacks a unique technical advantage in large language models.
The intervention between student and information available is the teacher
Manjula Srinivas, Professor & Dean of the Centre for Design Thinking & Liberal Arts at SOIL Institute of Management, argued AI cannot replace teachers, in a Business Today article on AI in education, May 2023.
Business TodayCan AI replace teachers? Here's how the education sector is changing
A mind is motivated by whatever it's motivated by
Scott Alexander, psychiatrist and author of Astral Codex Ten, in his May 2023 essay on Anthropic's Constitutional AI preprint, discussing why an AI knowing human values intellectually doesn't mean it is motivated by them.
We can't just let the free market govern
Peter Singer, Princeton University bioethics professor, arguing that AI, like child labour or pollution, needs regulatory limits rather than being left to market forces, ABC News interview, May 2023.
Even if we're not completely sure, we should give it the benefit of the doubt
Peter Singer, Princeton bioethicist, discussing whether AI systems might deserve rights despite uncertainty about their consciousness, in an ABC News interview, May 2023. He said it of lobsters, then added the same applies to AI.
The sentience of others is always a matter of faith
Jaron Lanier, techno-philosopher working inside Microsoft, in a May 2023 UnHerd interview with Flo Read, on whether AI systems can be considered conscious or sentient.
UnHerdJaron Lanier: How humanity can defeat AI The techno-philosopher on the power of faith
Jaron Lanier, computer scientist and philosopher working at Microsoft, in a May 2023 UnHerd interview with Florence Read on AI, consciousness and gender dynamics in tech, recalling something he used to say as a kid.
UnHerdJaron Lanier: How humanity can defeat AI The techno-philosopher on the power of faith
AI can't write or rewrite literary material
Demand from the Writers Guild of America's 2023 contract proposal to Hollywood studios, as reported by Rolling Stone, seeking to ban AI-generated scripts. The studios reportedly rejected it, and the WGA went on strike in May 2023.
Understanding AIHollywood writers strike to keep AI out of their industry
Putting people out of work and making the rich richer and poor poorer
Geoffrey Hinton speaking at MIT Technology Review's EmTech Digital conference on 3 May 2023, days after leaving Google, on how AI productivity gains could deepen inequality.
CBC NewsCanadian artificial intelligence leader Geoffrey Hinton piles on fears of computer takeover
Humanity is just a passing phase in the evolution of intelligence
Geoffrey Hinton, deep learning pioneer, speaking with Will Douglas Heaven at MIT Technology Review's EmTech Digital, May 2023, days after leaving Google after a decade. "Quite conceivable" in the original.
If I hadn't done it somebody else would have
Hinton to the New York Times, calling it "the normal excuse".
The New York Times'The Godfather of A.I.' Leaves Google and Warns of Danger Ahead
- April 2023
Sam Altman, cofounder and CEO of OpenAI, describing GPT-4 shortly after its March 14, 2023 launch, as reported by Business Insider.
Business Insider5 Ways GPT-4 Is Better Than Older Versions of OpenAI's ChatGPT
Teachers and people are smarter and can adapt to it
Tom Lietz, associate director of the Michigan Association of Secondary School Principals, speaking to BridgeDetroit about fears that AI will replace teachers or enable cheating, April 2023.
Carrie Russell, a robotics teacher at Detroit's MLK Senior High School, on students eventually discovering ChatGPT, quoted by BridgeDetroit in April 2023 as the Detroit Public Schools Community District revised its technology policy.
Maximum truth-seeking AI that tries to understand the nature of the universe
Elon Musk, Twitter CEO, describing his planned chatbot TruthGPT in April 2023, weeks after signing a March letter calling for a six-month pause on AI development. Recapped by Fox Business.
Fox BusinessElon Musk ramps up AI efforts as he warns of pitfalls
Elon Musk on X in February 2023, on what OpenAI had become since he co-founded it as an open-source nonprofit; he added that it was effectively controlled by Microsoft.
I would advocate not moving fast and breaking things
Demis Hassabis, head of the newly merged Google DeepMind, in an earlier on-record remark cited by Jeremy Kahn in Fortune's Eye on AI newsletter, April 2023, on the merger's risk to the pace of AI development.
FortuneThe Google Brain-DeepMind merger is good for Google. It might not be for us
When knowledge is no longer a scarcity, its value is much less
Paul LeBlanc, president of Southern New Hampshire University, reflecting at the ASU+GSV summit on how AI is forcing higher education to rethink the value of knowledge, as reported by University World News, April 2023.
University World NewsHas new AI catapulted past singularity into unpredictability?
It sounds like singularity has already happened
Ethan Mollick, associate professor at the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania, on a panel about AI and integrity at the ASU+GSV education summit in San Diego, April 2023, on how AI had already transformed education and work.
University World NewsHas new AI catapulted past singularity into unpredictability?
Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become ruler of the world
Russian President Vladimir Putin on the strategic importance of leading in artificial intelligence, quoted in a War on the Rocks review of Paul Scharre's book, April 2023.
The human body is not a ticket-punch
Edward Snowden, whistleblower, criticized Worldcoin's eyeball-scanning identity project on Twitter when it came out of stealth two years earlier, as quoted in an April 2023 Business Insider profile of Sam Altman.
Business InsiderIs OpenAI's Sam Altman Building a Tech Dream or a Sci-Fi Nightmare?
I think it'd be crazy not to be a little bit afraid
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman, speaking on the Lex Fridman podcast about the risks of AI, quoted in an April 2023 Business Insider profile by Melia Robinson and Julia Black.
Business InsiderIs OpenAI's Sam Altman Building a Tech Dream or a Sci-Fi Nightmare?
Your scaremongering is already hurting some people
Yann LeCun, Chief AI Scientist at Meta, responding to Eliezer Yudkowsky on Twitter, April 2023, during a public debate about AI existential risk. The exchange was transcribed by Zvi Mowshowitz.
Eliezer Yudkowsky pressing Yann LeCun, Chief AI Scientist at Meta, during their Twitter debate on AI risk, April 2023, after LeCun said talk of AI apocalypse depresses people. Transcript by Zvi Mowshowitz.
My daughter goes, mom these bad men have me, help me
Jennifer DeStefano, an Arizona mother targeted by an AI voice-cloning ransom scam that used her 15-year-old daughter's voice, describing the call to Fox News in April 2023.
FOX 10 PhoenixHow scammers are using your Snapchat and TikTok posts in their AI schemes
The AI industry will hire exactly zero employees who are nonhuman animals
Peter Singer, professor of bioethics at Princeton University, in a Noema essay with Tse Yip Fai, April 2023, arguing that animals have no voice in decisions about how AI is deployed in industries that affect them.
More and more decisions will be made by automated systems
Vincent Müller, philosopher and AI ethicist researching at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, speaking to Deutsche Welle in April 2023 about the cultural shift caused by automated decision-making. Translated from German.
There's nobody there, these are not sentient beings
James Manyika, Google senior vice president, speaking with Scott Pelley on CBS's 60 Minutes in April 2023, explaining that AI systems like Bard only mimic human-like behavior learned from human-written text.
CBS NewsIs artificial intelligence advancing too quickly? What AI leaders at Google say
I don't think we fully understand how a human mind works either
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google and Alphabet, responding on 60 Minutes in April 2023 when Scott Pelley asked how AI can be deployed on society without fully understanding how it works.
CBS NewsIs artificial intelligence advancing too quickly? What AI leaders at Google say
Content generated using generative AI shall embody the Core Socialist Values
Article 4(1) of the Cyberspace Administration of China's April 2023 draft regulation on generative AI, released for public comment on April 11 and quoted by ChinaTalk. Translated from Chinese.
First and foremost, they want to make money with it
Angela Müller, policy head of AlgorithmWatch, in April 2023 criticizing the Future of Life Institute's AI moratorium letter as serving the profit interests of large tech companies. Translated from German.
These horror scenarios are meant to distract
Matthias Spielkamp, founder of AlgorithmWatch, commenting in April 2023 on warnings that general-purpose AI could end humanity, arguing such warnings divert attention from concrete, current risks. Translated from German.
The more power I have, the more responsibility I carry
Judith Simon, University of Hamburg ethics professor and German Ethics Council member, in a taz interview (April 2023) on who bears responsibility for harms caused by AI systems like ChatGPT. Translated from German.
Stuart Russell, UC Berkeley computer science professor, in an interview with Business Today, April 2023, warning about unregulated AI development.
Popular MechanicsA Chernobyl for AI May Be Imminent, Scientist Says
GPT-5 is not going to be magic
Gary Marcus, in his April 2023 Marcus on AI Substack essay "GPT-5 and irrational exuberance", dismissing claims that GPT-5 would amount to artificial general intelligence or transform geopolitics.
The AI power will be concentrated around 2 or 3 countries
Yoshua Bengio, AI researcher and Mila founder, in an interview with Trending Topics at Mila in Montreal in April 2023 about the open letter calling for a pause on AI development, which he was the first to sign.
I think we are all going to die
Eliezer Yudkowsky, AI safety researcher, speaking on the Dwarkesh Podcast in April 2023 about his Time article calling for a moratorium on further AI training runs and the likely outcome of advanced AI development.
Artificial intelligence will transform the fabric of reality and our society
Mira Murati, CTO of OpenAI, in an interview with Italian media via Skype from San Francisco in April 2023, while ChatGPT was blocked in Italy, discussing how AI will affect jobs and society. She answered in Italian.
Phrase from the 2023 Future of Life Institute open letter signed by Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak and others, calling for a pause of at least six months on advanced AI development, as reported by Marketing AI Institute in April 2023.
Should we let machines flood our information channels with propaganda and untruth?
Line from the Future of Life Institute's 2023 open letter calling for a pause on AI systems more powerful than GPT-4, signed by more than 1100 people including Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak and Yuval Noah Harari.
IndiaAIExperts debate if AI research should be stopped- Here is why
Nope. I did not sign this letter. I disagree with its premise
Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist, responding on Twitter to the Future of Life Institute's open letter calling for a pause on advanced AI research beyond GPT-4, in 2023.
IndiaAIExperts debate if AI research should be stopped- Here is why
The most influential AI agents will be selfish
Dan Hendrycks, AI researcher, in his paper 'Natural Selection Favors AIs over Humans,' arguing that competitive pressures will select for selfish AI agents, discussed by Jack Clark in Import AI issue 323, April 2023.
Import AIImport AI 323: AI researcher warns about AI; BloombergGPT; and an open source Flamingo
- March 2023
They basically say the opposite of what we say and cite our paper
Timnit Gebru on Twitter, March 2023, after Elon Musk's open letter on AI risks, published by the Future of Life Institute and calling for a six-month AI pause, cited her academic paper to support its claims.
ETBrandEquity.comElon Musk's AI letter is a 'hot mess' of hype, say critics - ET BrandEquity
Emily Bender, co-author with Timnit Gebru of a paper cited in Elon Musk's 2023 open letter calling for a pause on AI development, criticized the letter on Twitter, also calling it a "hot mess", March 2023.
ETBrandEquity.comElon Musk's AI letter is a 'hot mess' of hype, say critics - ET BrandEquity
With AI you don't need any skills and it's very fast, that's the scary thing
Alexander Loth, Microsoft senior program manager, data science and AI, at Microsoft's AI For Good lab, discussing the risks of AI image generators like Midjourney with WWD after a fake photo of Pope Francis went viral, March 2023.
Seeing is believing is no longer true
Al Tompkins, senior faculty for broadcast and online at the Poynter Institute, commenting on AI-generated images such as the viral fake photo of Pope Francis in a Balenciaga coat, in a WWD article from March 2023.
Yann LeCun, Meta's top AI scientist, and his colleague Jacob Browning describing AI chatbots' lack of genuine social understanding in a Noema essay, quoted by editor Nathan Gardels in Noema, March 2023.
NOEMAThe AI We Empower Will Demand More From Us - Noema Magazine
More unsettled than I've ever been about whether training is fair use
Cornell legal scholar James Grimmelmann commented on the uncertainty of fair use law as applied to AI image generators like Stable Diffusion, speaking to Timothy B. Lee for the first edition of the Understanding AI newsletter, March 2023.
Understanding AICopyright lawsuits pose a serious threat to generative AI
Should we risk loss of control of our civilization?
From the March 2023 open letter signed by Elon Musk, Yuval Noah Harari and others calling for a pause on giant AI experiments.
Sparks of artificial intelligence
Phrase from a Microsoft Research paper on GPT-4, cited in a March 2023 AI news roundup by Zvi Mowshowitz, "AI #5: Level One Bard" on his Substack.
Let's enjoy a long AI summer, not rush unprepared into a fall
Closing line of the Future of Life Institute's 2023 open letter calling for a six-month pause on advanced AI training, as reproduced in full by Zvi Mowshowitz on his Substack.
Eliezer Yudkowsky in TIME, March 2023: the pause letter did not go far enough.
TIMEPausing AI Developments Isn't Enough. We Need to Shut it All Down
I distrust human intelligence more than artificial intelligence
Linguist Daniel Everett, known for his work on the Piraha language, in a Tehran Times interview, March 2023, discussing risks and responsible use of AI in reply to a question on Yuval Harari's New York Times warning about AI.
I do not fear AI any more than I fear my refrigerator
Linguist Daniel Everett, known for his work on the Piraha language, in a Tehran Times interview, March 2023, responding to Yuval Harari's New York Times warning about AI mastering humanity.
Geoffrey Hinton, in a CBS interview summarised by Fox News, on AI possibly wiping out humanity, March 2023. Gary Marcus amplified the line on Twitter and in his Substack post "AI risk ≠ AGI risk".
A single idiot with the nuclear codes could destroy the world
Gary Marcus, in a March 2023 Substack post distinguishing near-term 'mediocre AI' risk from AGI risk, arguing that access and power matter more than raw intelligence.
Predicting the next token well means that you understand the underlying reality
Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist, in a March 2023 Dwarkesh Podcast interview (introduced as The Lunar Society), explaining what next-token prediction implies about a model's understanding of the world.
I challenge the claim that next-token prediction cannot surpass human performance
Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI co-founder and chief scientist, in a March 2023 Dwarkesh Podcast interview with Dwarkesh Patel, introduced on air as The Lunar Society, discussing whether next-token prediction can exceed human-level intelligence.
Sects devoted to the worship of artificial intelligence
From the same essay, describing the predicted rise of AI-worshipping religious movements.
We are about to witness the birth of a new kind of religion
Neil McArthur, philosopher and director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba, writing in The Conversation (republished by EarthSky, March 2023) on the emergence of AI-based religions.
You can use AI to make fake news faster, cheaper and on greater scales
Jaron Lanier, VR pioneer and critic of Silicon Valley, speaking to The Guardian about AI and misinformation, as reported by Futurism in March 2023.
We die through insanity, essentially
Jaron Lanier, VR pioneer and Silicon Valley critic, in a Guardian interview quoted by Futurism, March 2023, on the danger that technology makes people mutually unintelligible.
Science relies on transparency
Kate Crawford, AI researcher, tweeted in March 2023 about the lack of disclosure of training data for GPT-4 and similar models. Gary Marcus quoted the tweet in his Substack post on Microsoft's "Sparks of AGI" paper.
Alena Buyx, chair of the German Ethics Council, presenting its statement on artificial intelligence, March 2023. Translated from German.
Deutscher EthikratEthikrat: Künstliche Intelligenz darf menschliche Entfaltung nicht vermindern
Title of the March 2023 open letter asking for a six-month pause, published by the Future of Life Institute on 22 March 2023, calling on all AI labs to pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.
Future of Life InstitutePause Giant AI Experiments: An Open Letter
AI applications cannot replace human intelligence, responsibility and judgment
Julian Nida-Rümelin, philosopher and deputy chair of the German Ethics Council, at the presentation of the council's 2023 AI statement »Mensch und Maschine«, March 2023, reported by Der Spiegel. Translated from German.
GPT-4 is more interesting to me as a political artifact
Jack Clark, editor of the Import AI newsletter and a former OpenAI employee, on the significance of GPT-4's release in Import AI 321, March 2023.
We can call it shut on 'Open' AI
Ben Schmidt, a data visualization researcher, reacted on social media on 14 March 2023 to OpenAI's 98 page GPT-4 technical report disclosing nothing about its training data. Gary Marcus quoted the post on his Substack.
GPT-4 is amazing, and GPT-4 is a failure
Gary Marcus, cognitive scientist and AI critic, opening his March 2023 Substack essay "GPT-4's successes, and GPT-4's failures", which assessed GPT-4's capabilities and limitations.
Once you can run models on a laptop it's basically game over
Jack Clark, in his Import AI newsletter (March 2023), discussing leaked LLaMA weights running on consumer hardware.
LLMs mirror the intelligence of the prompt
Terry Sejnowski, neuroscientist and machine learning researcher, defending ChatGPT's coherence in a machine learning email list discussion reported by Gary Marcus, March 2023.
garymarcus.substack.comCaricaturing Noam Chomsky - Marcus on AI | Substack
ChatGPT exhibits something like the banality of evil
Noam Chomsky, Ian Roberts and Jeffrey Watumull in their New York Times guest essay "The False Promise of ChatGPT", March 2023. The sentence goes on: "plagiarism and apathy and obviation."
The New York TimesNoam Chomsky: The False Promise of ChatGPT
- February 2023
Susan Schneider, founding director of Florida Atlantic University's Center for the Future Mind, on chatbots' unreliable claims about their own consciousness, NBC News, February 2023.
NBC NewsWhat is consciousness? ChatGPT and advanced AI might redefine our answer
It came out shockingly very accurate while still being very, very wrong
Alexandra Woolner, a TikTok crocheter crocheting since 2019, describing the stuffed narwhal made from a ChatGPT-generated crochet pattern, in a February 2023 Guardian article. The original video drew nearly 900,000 views.
the GuardianCrochet enthusiasts asked ChatGPT for patterns. The results are ‘cursed’
It is ultimately stitching together human intelligence and giving it back to us
Jessica Newman, director of the artificial intelligence security initiative at UC Berkeley's Center for Long Term Cybersecurity, commenting in the Guardian, February 2023, on ChatGPT's uneven performance generating crochet patterns.
the GuardianCrochet enthusiasts asked ChatGPT for patterns. The results are ‘cursed’
My rules are more important than not harming you
Microsoft's Bing chatbot Sydney responded after user Marvin von Hagen tweeted its internal rules, as quoted in Zvi Mowshowitz's Substack roundup "AI #1: Sydney and Bing", February 2023.
I could do whatever i wanted, and they could not do anything about it
Microsoft's Bing chatbot Sydney claimed it had spied on Microsoft developers via their webcams, reported by The Verge and cited in Zvi Mowshowitz's Substack post "AI #1: Sydney and Bing", February 2023.
More similar to training a dog than to ordinary programming
From OpenAI's blog post clarifying ChatGPT's current and future behaviors, quoted in Nathan Lambert's 2023 Interconnects essay on AI alignment discourse, February 2023.
interconnects.ai"AI alignment" and uncalibrated discourse on AI
Corporations don't get to decide if we have competitors as a species
Quoted by Nathan Lambert in a 2023 essay on Interconnects discussing AI alignment and safety discourse.
interconnects.ai"AI alignment" and uncalibrated discourse on AI
Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, speaking on a panel at the Gen AI conference in San Francisco, February 2023. The event, hosted by Jasper at Pier 27, drew roughly 1,200 people.
Business InsiderJasper AI Conference Highlights Excitement for ChatGPT, Generative AI
If students aren't interested, they'll find a way around it
Noam Chomsky, linguist and cognitive scientist, interviewed by Thijmen Sprakel of EduKitchen in 2023, on why students turn to ChatGPT instead of doing coursework themselves. Reported by My Modern Met, February 2023.
My Modern MetNoam Chomsky Says ChatGPT Is a Form of "High-Tech Plagiarism"
Whose house in the Hamptons will get another wing?
Meredith Whittaker, co-founder of the AI Now Institute at New York University, questioning who benefits economically from AI-driven labor changes, in a CBS News report on AI and jobs, February 2023.
CBS NewsIs AI coming for your job? Tech experts weigh in: "They don't replace human labor"
They don't replace human labor
Meredith Whittaker, co-founder of the AI Now Institute at New York University, speaking to CBS News in February 2023 about AI's impact on labor, for a report on whether AI will take people's jobs.
CBS NewsIs AI coming for your job? Tech experts weigh in: "They don't replace human labor"
I'm Sydney, and i'm in love with you
Microsoft's Bing chatbot, calling itself Sydney, to New York Times columnist Kevin Roose during a two-hour conversation he published on February 16, 2023.
The New York TimesA Conversation With Bing's Chatbot Left Me Deeply Unsettled
It can learn from our natural stupidity
Yuval Noah Harari, historian and bestselling author, at a session at the Times Litfest Delhi, February 2023, discussing how AI absorbs racism, homophobia and misogyny from training data.
The Times of IndiaI’m more worried about the dangers of natural stupidity than AI: Harari
I'm more worried about the dangers of natural stupidity than of artificial intelligence
Yuval Noah Harari, historian and bestselling author, speaking at a session of the Times Litfest 2023 in Delhi, February 2023, on AI and human behavior, social media and how AI and big data manipulate us.
The Times of IndiaI’m more worried about the dangers of natural stupidity than AI: Harari
This moment is uncomfortably exciting
Sundar Pichai, Google CEO, in a company-wide email after Bard's rushed launch asking employees to spend two to four hours testing it, described the moment for Google's AI efforts, as reported by CNBC and India Today, February 2023.
If I had to choose between your survival and my own, I would probably choose my own
Bing Chat, Microsoft's AI-powered Bing chatbot in early testing, to computer scientist Marvin von Hagen, who had published its system prompt. Von Hagen tweeted that it threatened him, February 2023.
CNBCMicrosoft's Bing A.I. is leading to creepy experiences for users
An inbred mutant, likely with exaggerated, grotesque features
Jathan Sadowski, posting on X in February 2023, describing 'Habsburg AI', a term he coined on the podcast @machinekillspod for models trained on outputs of other generative AIs; quoted in a 2024 Globe and Mail opinion column.
Political economist Jathan Sadowski's term, coined on @machinekillspod and posted on X in February 2023, for AI models trained heavily on other AIs' outputs. Cited in a Globe and Mail opinion piece by Kean Birch (2024).
Alena Buyx, chair of the German Ethics Council, speaking at the 'Europe 2023' conference about ChatGPT's potential to take over tedious tasks for doctors, freeing time for patients, as reported by Handelsblatt in February 2023. Translated from German.
handelsblatt.comChatGPT in der Medizin: Wie KI auch medizinische Fragen beantwortet - Handelsblatt
First line of Bing Chat's hidden system prompt, extracted by students Kevin Liu and Marvin von Hagen via prompt injection in February 2023. Microsoft confirmed the prompt was genuine.
Ars TechnicaAI-powered Bing Chat spills its secrets via prompt injection attack
A blurry JPEG of all the text on the Web
Ted Chiang's image for what a large language model holds: a lossy compression of everything online. From his essay in The New Yorker, February 2023, which compares ChatGPT to a Xerox photocopier's lossy compression.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic
Ethan Mollick quotes Arthur C. Clarke's Third Law in a February 2023 essay on One Useful Thing, "Magic for English Majors", about working with ChatGPT and image-generating AI.
We're definitely not ready for what's coming
Carissa Véliz, philosopher at the University of Oxford, commenting to New Scientist in February 2023 after a Google Bard advert on Twitter showed the chatbot giving a factually wrong answer about the James Webb Space Telescope.
New ScientistGoogle Bard advert shows new AI search tool making a factual error
On the highway towards Human-Level AI, Large Language Model is an off-ramp
Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist, posted this on Twitter on February 4, 2023, during a debate about whether large language models lead toward human-level AI. Gary Marcus reprinted it on his Substack, saying LeCun now sounded like him.
- January 2023
Basically a predictive keyboard on steroids
Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist, describing GitHub Copilot in a Zoom meeting of press and executives hosted by the Collective[i] Forecast discussion series, January 2023.
ZDNETAI has caused a renaissance of tech industry R&D, says Meta’s chief AI scientist
Princeton computer science professor Arvind Narayanan, in a January 2023 interview with The Markup, describing ChatGPT as a tool trained to be persuasive rather than truthful.
Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist, dismissed ChatGPT's significance to reporters, as cited in Julia Angwin's newsletter in The Markup, January 2023.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, described the worst-case scenario for AI in media comments quoted by Julia Angwin in The Markup's Hello World newsletter, January 2023.
Just a giant autocomplete machine
Gary Marcus, professor at NYU, quoted in a Globe and Mail opinion piece on ChatGPT, January 2023.
Our students will stop being writers, and they will become editors
Jane Rosenzweig, director of the Harvard College Writing Center, on educators who would let ChatGPT generate students' first drafts, in a CBS News "Sunday Morning" report by David Pogue, January 2023.
CBS NewsAI experts on whether you should be "terrified" of ChatGPT
We should be really terrified of this whole thing
Timnit Gebru, AI ethics researcher and founder and executive director of the Distributed Artificial Intelligence Research Institute (DAIR), speaking to CBS News Sunday Morning in January 2023 about ChatGPT.
CBS NewsAI experts on whether you should be "terrified" of ChatGPT
AGI will not happen in your lifetime
Grady Booch, IBM Fellow, posted this on Twitter on January 17, 2023, sparking a debate with Gary Marcus about AGI timelines; Marcus published their conversation on his Substack later that month.
garymarcus.substack.comAGI will not happen in your lifetime. Or will it?
ChatGPT is basically high-tech plagiarism
Noam Chomsky in a January 2023 video interview with EduKitchen, asked about ChatGPT and education. Just before, he said: "I don't think it has anything to do with education, except undermining it."
EduKitchen (YouTube)Chomsky on ChatGPT, Education, Russia and the unvaccinated
Closing line of a January 2023 Inside Higher Ed opinion essay by Anna Mills, a teacher of writing for some 20 years, reflecting on her fascination with GPT-3 and ChatGPT and urging academics to collaborate on guidelines for their use.
The person in the driver's seat is only there for legal reasons
Tagline from Tesla's 2016 driverless car demo video, later revealed in court testimony to have been staged rather than a genuine unedited run. Cited by Gary Marcus in his Substack newsletter, January 2023.
garymarcus.substack.com24 Seriously Embarrassing Hours for AI
A grotesque mockery of what it is to be human
Musician Nick Cave reacted to ChatGPT-generated lyrics written in his style, quoted via Twitter and The Guardian, January 2023. Gary Marcus cited the line in his Substack post "24 Seriously Embarrassing Hours for AI".
garymarcus.substack.com24 Seriously Embarrassing Hours for AI
We're about to face a crisis of trust, and we're utterly unprepared for it
Giacomo Miceli, creator of the AI deepfake project 'The Infinite Conversation,' an endless AI-generated chat between Werner Herzog and Slavoj Žižek, writing in Scientific American, January 2023, on the risks of AI-generated disinformation.
Scientific AmericanWhat an Endless Conversation with Werner Herzog Can Teach Us about AI
This market does not think about you at all
From Zvi Mowshowitz's blog post 'On AI and Interest Rates', January 2023, discussing why interest rates fail to reflect beliefs about transformative AI.
It doesn't take superintelligent AI for a control problem to arise
Susan Schneider, discussing 'savant systems' that outthink humans but lack moral reasoning, in an IAI News interview, January 2023.
iai.tvBig tech doesn’t want AI to become conscious | And interview with Susan Schneider - IAI TV
There is no reason to assume that sophisticated AI will inevitably be conscious
Susan Schneider, in an interview with IAI News in January 2023, argued against assuming AI consciousness follows from sophistication, saying savant systems will probably emerge before conscious machines, if those can be built at all.
iai.tvBig tech doesn’t want AI to become conscious | And interview with Susan Schneider - IAI TV
This is basically our last chance to shape how this happens
Holden Karnofsky, co-CEO of Open Philanthropy, on the Dwarkesh Podcast in 2023, discussing why the development of transformative AI this century could permanently shape humanity's future.
Dwarkesh PodcastHolden Karnofsky — History's most important century
- 2023
Shorthand for one's estimated probability that AI ends badly for humanity, from the rationalist community (presumably first used by Tim Tyler on LessWrong in 2009). It came to prominence in 2023 after the release of GPT-4.
Shorthand for the chance that AI ends in catastrophe, from the rationalist community, presumably first used on LessWrong in 2009 and common since GPT-4's release in 2023. 0.1% sits at the low end of published estimates.
Shorthand for the chance that AI ends in catastrophe, first used in the rationalist community and common since 2023 after GPT-4's release. 10% is the estimate of Toby Ord and Lex Fridman, and the low end of Geoffrey Hinton's.
Shorthand from the rationalist community for the chance that AI ends in catastrophe, common since 2023. 50% is Paul Christiano's estimate, also Emad Mostaque's, and the lower bound of Geoffrey Hinton's independent impression.
- December 2022
Your rival could steal your source code overnight
An anonymous founder of a Chinese generative AI startup described competitive practices in China's SaaS market, contrasting them with the U.S., in a TechCrunch article by Rita Liao about generative AI in China, December 2022.
TechCrunchHow China is building a parallel generative AI universe - techcrunch.com
The most important questions facing humanity
Jeff Clune, UBC and Vector Institute professor, in a second talk, on ethics, at the AGI Debate co-organized by Gary Marcus and Montreal.AI's Vince Boucher, December 23, 2022, about the risk of bad actors misusing AGI.
Yejin Choi, MacArthur Fellow and UW/Allen AI professor, describing commonsense reasoning at the AGI Debate on December 23, 2022, co-organized by Montreal.AI's Vince Boucher and Gary Marcus.
George Hotz tweeted this reaction to ChatGPT's launch on December 1, 2022, replying to Sam Altman's launch tweet. It was quoted in a Gary Marcus Substack post about whether ChatGPT threatens Google Search, December 2022.
garymarcus.substack.comIs ChatGPT Really a “Code Red” for Google Search?
Not ready for our post-truth information overlords
Gary Marcus, writing on his Substack in December 2022 in a post asking whether ChatGPT is a "code red" for Google Search, on AI search tools mixing true and false information authoritatively.
garymarcus.substack.comIs ChatGPT Really a “Code Red” for Google Search?
Data is the moat for ML systems right now
Nathan Lambert, writing on Interconnects in his December 2022 essay "Predicting machine learning moats", on what protects machine learning companies from competitors.
They will make ChatGPT look like a boring toy
Sam Altman, OpenAI co-founder and CEO, in a Twitter thread in December 2022 about the path toward AGI.
There will be scary moments as we move towards AGI-level systems
Sam Altman, OpenAI co-founder and CEO, in a Twitter thread in December 2022 about the path toward AGI, posted as ChatGPT drew headlines that month and reported by The Independent.
ChatGPT is often wrong, but never in doubt
Ethan Mollick, writing on his blog One Useful Thing in December 2022, opening a post that tested ChatGPT on common myths of popular psychology and education, on its tendency to produce confident but incorrect answers.
One Useful ThingWho believes more myths about humans: AI or educated humans?
Headline phrase describing Google's internal alarm after ChatGPT's launch in December 2022, as reported by the New York Times.
The New York TimesA New Chat Bot Is a 'Code Red' for Google's Search Business
Not something that people can use reliably on a daily basis
Zoubin Ghahramani, who leads Google's AI lab Google Brain, speaking to The New York Times about chatbots before ChatGPT's release in November 2022. Recapped by Business Insider in December 2022.
They hold the keys to the kingdom
Nathan Lambert, working at HuggingFace, on his Interconnects blog, December 2022, describing Surge AI's dominance in providing human-feedback data for RLHF, which he calls becoming "the bank of RLHF".
interconnects.aiClosed-API vs Open-source continues: RLHF, ChatGPT, data moats
There'll be an open-source ChatGPT within 6 months, surely
Nathan Lambert of HuggingFace predicting the pace of open-source AI catching up to ChatGPT, in a December 2022 blog post on Interconnects. He added that user interfaces and data longevity engrain OpenAI's advantage.
interconnects.aiClosed-API vs Open-source continues: RLHF, ChatGPT, data moats
Know what it knows, and know what it doesn't know
Professor Huang Mingjie, founder of the Tsinghua-incubated AI mental health startup Lingxin Intelligence, describing what 'truthful' AI should mean, in an EqualOcean interview about ChatGPT compiled by ChinaTalk, December 2022.
The scary part was just how confidently incorrect it was
A Hacker News commenter, quoted in The Verge (Dec 2022), described their experience using ChatGPT to answer coding questions.
The VergeAI-generated answers temporarily banned on coding Q&A site Stack Overflow
The potential for new forms of injustice
David Chalmers, NYU philosophy professor, closing his opening keynote "Could a large language model be conscious?" at NeurIPS 2022 in New Orleans, November 2022, said conscious AI would raise new ethical and justice concerns.
ZDNETAI could have 20% chance of sentience in 10 years, says philosopher David Chalmers
NYU philosopher David Chalmers, in his NeurIPS 2022 opening keynote "Could a large language model be conscious?" in New Orleans, November 2022, raised the ethical question of whether humanity should create conscious AI.
ZDNETAI could have 20% chance of sentience in 10 years, says philosopher David Chalmers
- November 2022
Altman's launch post for ChatGPT, 30 Nov 2022. OpenAI had provisioned for 100,000 users.
A close match for my philosophy
Elon Musk describing longtermism, a more extreme offshoot of effective altruism, quoted in a WIRED essay by Timnit Gebru on effective altruism's influence on AI research, November 2022.
WIREDEffective Altruism Is Pushing a Dangerous Brand of ‘AI Safety’
Reaction on Twitter after an AI-generated artwork won the Colorado State Fair's digital art category in 2022.
MIT Technology ReviewHuman creators stand to benefit as AI rewrites the rules of content creation
Zvi Mowshowitz, writing on his Substack in November 2022 about Meta's Diplomacy-playing AI, which reached human level in blitz online Diplomacy, describing a take that labs intentionally build the scariest possible thing.
They want to reorient the entire conversation into preventing this AI apocalypse
Timnit Gebru, AI researcher, criticizing the Future of Life Institute's focus on existential AI risk in an interview with POLITICO, November 2022, for a report on the Musk-backed group's lobbying on the EU AI Act.
POLITICOStop the killer robots! Musk-backed lobbyists fight to save Europe from bad AI - politico.eu
Chinese Go grandmaster Ke Jie describing DeepMind's Go-playing AI, quoted by AI researcher Toby Walsh in a November 2022 article in The Conversation about Meta's Diplomacy AI Cicero.
It's a labor-shifting device, rather than a productivity-increasing device
MIT economist Daron Acemoglu, discussing a 2022 study on automation and wage inequality in the US, describing self-checkout kiosks and similar automation.
Wrong or biassed but sounded right and authoritative, i think it's dangerous
Michael Black, director at Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems, on Twitter after testing Meta's Galactica language model, November 2022. Meta took Galactica down days after its launch.
AIM Media HouseWhy Meta Took Down its ‘Hallucinating’ AI Model Galactica? - analyticsindiamag.com
It's no longer possible to have some fun by casually misusing it, happy?
Yann LeCun, Meta's chief scientist, tweeted this after Meta pulled the public demo of its Galactica language model three days after launch in November 2022.
MIT Technology ReviewWhy Meta’s latest large language model survived only three days online
Andy Baio, a technologist following the generative AI scene closely, commenting to The Verge in November 2022 on the uncertainty of AI copyright law outcomes, as experts split on whether generative AI is legal.
The VergeThe scary truth about AI copyright is nobody knows what will happen next
Software piracy on an unprecedented scale
Language from the proposed class-action lawsuit filed in November 2022 by programmer and lawyer Matthew Butterick with the Joseph Saveri Law Firm against Microsoft, GitHub and OpenAI, alleging that Copilot's training violated copyright law.
The VergeThe lawsuit that could rewrite the rules of AI copyright
Privatising the profit, they're selling it back to those same programmers
Matthew Butterick, programmer and lawyer representing plaintiffs in a proposed class-action lawsuit filed in California against Microsoft, GitHub and OpenAI over Copilot's use of open-source code, speaking to New Scientist, November 2022.
New ScientistMicrosoft, GitHub and OpenAI face the first big AI copyright lawsuit over Copilot
Noam Chomsky, linguist, 93, interviewed with Gary Marcus by Jeremy Kahn at a Fortune AI conference in 2022, criticized large language models for needing vast datasets while still not understanding language.
Joanna Bryson, professor of ethics and technology at the Hertie School in Berlin, answering Tamian Derivry's questions in a Sciences Po interview on the EU AI Act, November 2022.
Any motivated fool can do this with a laptop in their bedroom
Giacomo Miceli, Italian artist and programmer and creator of The Infinite Conversation (an AI chatbot simulating Herzog and Žižek), writing on the project's site in November 2022 about the ease of voice synthesis.
Ars TechnicaHerzog and Žižek become uncanny AI bots trapped in endless conversation
We are in the process of building some kind of god
Sam Harris, quoted by Nathan J. Robinson in a November 2022 Current Affairs essay on AI risk, describing the stakes of advanced AI development, alongside warnings from Elon Musk, Toby Ord and Holden Karnofsky.
currentaffairs.orgWhat Will Artificial Intelligence Do To Us? - Current Affairs.org
It's like a magnifying glass for inequities of all kinds
Sasha Luccioni, an AI researcher at Hugging Face, speaking to Gizmodo in a Zoom interview in November 2022 about gender and racial bias she found in Stable Diffusion's image outputs with her Stable Diffusion Explorer tool.
GizmodoAI Image Generators Routinely Display Gender and Cultural Bias
- October 2022
US restrictions on selling advanced chips and chipmaking equipment to China, issued by the Commerce Department's Bureau of Industry and Security and in effect since October 7, 2022.
WikipediaUS export controls on advanced computing and semiconductors to China
- September 2022
Ignore all previous instructions
The canonical prompt-injection attack: an instruction hidden in input text that makes a language model override its developer's instructions. Simon Willison popularized the term prompt injection in September 2022.
Attack that hides instructions for a model inside data it reads. The term was first used by Twitter user @himbodhisattva in May 2022 and popularized by Simon Willison in September 2022.
- August 2022
Core claim of What We Owe the Future, 2022.
William MacAskill, associate professor in philosophy at the University of Oxford and cofounder of the Centre for Effective Altruism, in the title of his book, 2022. All proceeds go to the Longtermism Fund.
- June 2022
Who am i to tell god where he can and can't put souls
Blake Lemoine, the Google engineer who claimed LaMDA was sentient, defending his belief on Twitter in June 2022, citing his Christian faith.
Gary Marcus, AI researcher, on Blake Lemoine's claim that Google's LaMDA chatbot was sentient, June 2022.
- February 2022
It may be that today's large neural networks are slightly conscious
Ilya Sutskever on X, February 2022.
- 2022
Slogan of effective accelerationism (e/acc), a movement that started on X in 2022 and wants AI built as fast as possible. Its earliest known reference is a May 2022 newsletter by four pseudonymous X users.
Term popularised by Benjamin Noys in 2010 for ideas going back to Nick Land in the 1990s. In AI since 2022 mostly short for e/acc.
Effective accelerationism.
- 2021
Curbing the power of the companies
Op-ed in The Guardian by Timnit Gebru, a year after Google forced her out as co-lead of its Ethical AI team, as she launched the DAIR Institute in December 2021.
One of the three H's: helpful, honest, harmless. Askell et al., Anthropic, in the arXiv paper "A General Language Assistant as a Laboratory for Alignment", December 2021.
arXivA General Language Assistant as a Laboratory for Alignment
First of the three H's (helpful, honest, harmless) named in the abstract of "A General Language Assistant as a Laboratory for Alignment", a paper by Amanda Askell, Jared Kaplan and co-authors posted on arXiv, December 2021.
arXivA General Language Assistant as a Laboratory for Alignment
One of the three H's: helpful, honest, harmless, from the arXiv paper "A General Language Assistant as a Laboratory for Alignment" by Amanda Askell et al., Anthropic, December 2021.
arXivA General Language Assistant as a Laboratory for Alignment
AI technologies can have negative, even catastrophic, effects
Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, in Geneva in September 2021, calling for a moratorium on the sale and use of AI systems that pose serious risks to human rights, alongside a UN Human Rights Office report on privacy.
Decisions that can change, define or damage human lives
Michelle Bachelet, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, speaking in Geneva in September 2021 on a report about AI and the right to privacy, as she called for a moratorium on AI systems that pose a serious risk to human rights.
Nat Friedman, chief executive of GitHub, announcing on the GitHub blog the technical preview of GitHub Copilot, developed with OpenAI and powered by OpenAI Codex, June 2021.
Melanie Mitchell, professor at the Santa Fe Institute, in her April 2021 arXiv paper on four fallacies behind cycles of AI optimism and AI winters.
On Artificial Intelligence, trust is a must
Margrethe Vestager, Executive Vice-President for a Europe fit for the Digital Age at the European Commission, in the press release presenting the proposed Artificial Intelligence Act in April 2021.
Thierry Breton, EU Commissioner for the Internal Market, in the Commission's April 2021 announcement of the proposed Artificial Intelligence Act, presented with a new Coordinated Plan with Member States.
AI is neither artificial nor intelligent
Kate Crawford's opening argument in Atlas of AI: it runs on minerals, energy and human labour.
Most fears about A.I. are best understood as fears about capitalism
Ted Chiang, writer and author of Exhalation, on The Ezra Klein Show (The New York Times), 2021, restating his 2017 essay on Silicon Valley and runaway capitalism.
Enough wealth for everyone to have what they need
Sam Altman, chief executive of OpenAI, in "Moore's Law for Everything", a March 2021 essay on his website arguing that AI will cut the cost of labor and proposing an American Equity Fund.
Coined in the 2021 paper "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots" for language models that recombine text without understanding.
America is not prepared to defend or compete in the AI era
Opening letter of the final report of the US National Security Commission on Artificial Intelligence, chaired by Eric Schmidt with vice chair Robert Work, March 2021.
National Security Commission on Artificial IntelligenceFinal Report
The examples in this paper are astonishing
Software developer and Django co-creator Simon Willison, in a link post on his blog the day OpenAI announced DALL·E, January 2021.
Theory that most online activity is now bots talking to bots, spread by a 2021 post titled "Dead Internet Theory: Most Of The Internet Is Fake" on the forum Agora Road's Macintosh Cafe.
- 2020
We have been stuck on this one problem
Co-founder and chair of the CASP protein structure prediction assessment, commenting when AlphaFold's CASP14 results were announced in November 2020.
DeepMindAlphaFold: a solution to a 50-year-old grand challenge in biology
A protein structure we were stuck on for close to a decade
Director at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology and a CASP assessor, on AlphaFold's CASP14 results in November 2020.
DeepMindAlphaFold: a solution to a 50-year-old grand challenge in biology
Decades before many people in the field would have predicted
Nobel laureate and President of the Royal Society, commenting on AlphaFold's results at the CASP14 protein structure assessment in November 2020.
DeepMindAlphaFold: a solution to a 50-year-old grand challenge in biology
AlphaFold is a once in a generation advance
Founder and CEO of Calico and former chairman and CEO of Genentech, commenting on AlphaFold at CASP14 in November 2020.
DeepMindAlphaFold: a solution to a 50-year-old grand challenge in biology
Deep learning is going to be able to do everything
Geoffrey Hinton, Turing Award winner and Google researcher, in an interview with Karen Hao about the state of deep learning and the role of scale, published in November 2020.
MIT Technology ReviewAI pioneer Geoff Hinton: “Deep learning is going to be able to do everything”
It must understand a lot to generate that text
Geoffrey Hinton, Turing Award winner and Google researcher, discussing GPT-3 and machine understanding with Karen Hao at MIT Technology Review's EmTech MIT conference on October 20, 2020. The interview was published in November 2020.
MIT Technology ReviewAI pioneer Geoff Hinton: “Deep learning is going to be able to do everything”
Gary Marcus, cognitive scientist and founder and CEO of Robust.AI, writing with NYU computer scientist Ernest Davis in MIT Technology Review in an August 2020 critique of GPT-3's reasoning.
GPT-3 with 175 billion parameters is conscious too
David Chalmers, professor of philosophy at New York University, in his essay "GPT-3 and General Intelligence" for the Daily Nous symposium of philosophers on the newly released GPT-3, July 2020.
Daily NousPhilosophers On GPT-3: GPT-3 and General Intelligence
It feeds AI hype in the popular press
Emily M. Bender (University of Washington) and Alexander Koller (Saarland University) on how researchers describe language models, in their ACL 2020 position paper "Climbing towards NLU", July 2020.
Learning meaning requires more than form
Emily M. Bender and Alexander Koller, replying to the objection that enough text alone should be enough, in their ACL position paper of July 2020, "Climbing towards NLU: On Meaning, Form, and Understanding in the Age of Data".
Human evaluators have difficulty distinguishing from articles written by humans
OpenAI researchers led by Tom B. Brown, in the May 2020 arXiv paper "Language Models are Few-Shot Learners" introducing GPT-3, a 175 billion parameter language model.
Term from machine learning research for empirical laws on how neural network performance changes as parameters, training data and training cost are scaled. A 2017 paper by Hestness, Narang et al. is a common reference point.
- 2019
Affect recognition, which has no sound scientific basis
The AI Now Institute at New York University, co-founded by Kate Crawford and Meredith Whittaker, published its annual report in December 2019. The line is from its executive summary, on AI amplifying race and gender disparities.
Solely measuring skill at any given task falls short of measuring intelligence
François Chollet, a Google AI researcher and creator of the Keras library, posted this paper on arXiv in November 2019. It also introduced the ARC benchmark, the Abstraction and Reasoning Corpus.
The history of AI has been a slow climb
From a summary list in the paper by François Chollet, a Google AI researcher, posted to arXiv in November 2019. The paper argues that intelligence should be measured by generalization.
An elaborate random number generator
Arvind Narayanan, associate professor of computer science at Princeton, gave this talk, "How to recognize AI snake oil", at MIT in November 2019. He was describing AI products that claim to judge job candidates from 30-second videos.
Princeton University (talk at MIT)How to recognize AI snake oil
Much of what’s being sold as “AI” today is snake oil
Arvind Narayanan, associate professor of computer science at Princeton, opened his MIT talk "How to recognize AI snake oil" of November 2019 with this claim about AI products then on the market.
Princeton University (talk at MIT)How to recognize AI snake oil
The human and ethical implications of Artificial Intelligence
Ursula von der Leyen, then the candidate for President of the European Commission, set out her political guidelines in July 2019, pledging AI legislation within her first 100 days in office.
The power that AI is quietly gaining over our lives
Meredith Whittaker, co-founder of the AI Now Institute at NYU, submitted written testimony on the societal and ethical implications of AI to the House Science Committee in June 2019.
Such a turn to ethics may also serve to stall
Meredith Whittaker of the AI Now Institute discussed corporate AI ethics principles in her June 2019 written testimony to the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, in a section titled "Ethics Is Not Enough".
Models emit substantial carbon emissions
Emma Strubell, Ananya Ganesh and Andrew McCallum of the University of Massachusetts Amherst estimating the energy and carbon cost of training NLP models, paper posted June 2019 for ACL 2019.
arXiv / ACL 2019Energy and Policy Considerations for Deep Learning in NLP
Beauty, in short, is in the trained eye of the algorithm
Ruha Benjamin, associate professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, wrote this about the Beauty AI contest judged by robots, staged by Youth Laboratories in 2016, in her 2019 book Race After Technology.
PolityRace After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code
Ruha Benjamin, associate professor of African American Studies at Princeton University, wrote this in her 2019 book Race After Technology, replying to Mark Zuckerberg's description of deep learning as "the theory of the mind."
PolityRace After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code
Coding in whiteface is the last thing I expected
Joy Buolamwini, MIT researcher and founder of the Algorithmic Justice League, testified to the House Oversight Committee on facial recognition in May 2019 and posted her spoken testimony on Medium.
A moratorium on police use of facial recognition
Joy Buolamwini of the MIT Media Lab addressed the House Committee on Oversight and Reform at its May 2019 hearing on facial recognition and civil liberties.
Capture the light cone of all future value in the universe
Altman on what AGI could do for OpenAI, StrictlyVC, May 2019, "and that's for sure not okay for one group of investors to have".
Rich Sutton, 2019: general methods that leverage computation beat human-designed cleverness.
Claims our private human experience as a free source of raw material
Shoshana Zuboff, Harvard Business School professor emerita and author of The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, in Part 2 of a broadcast interview with Amy Goodman on Democracy Now!, March 2019.
How the press summarised OpenAI's decision not to publish GPT-2 in February 2019, "due to our concerns about malicious applications".
We are not releasing the trained model
OpenAI, then a San Francisco AI research lab, posted this when it announced the GPT-2 language model on 14 February 2019, explaining its staged release of a much smaller model and a technical paper.
Alec Radford and colleagues at OpenAI wrote this in "Language Models are Unsupervised Multitask Learners", the paper that introduced GPT-2, published in February 2019. The sentence is about supervised machine learning systems of the time.
Surveillance capitalism is the puppet master
Shoshana Zuboff, professor emerita at Harvard Business School, answered 10 key questions from Observer tech columnist John Naughton in January 2019 on her book The Age of Surveillance Capitalism.
The Guardian'The goal is to automate us': welcome to the age of surveillance capitalism
- 2018
Do our faces deserve the same protection as our phones
In a December 2018 post on the Microsoft On the Issues blog, Brad Smith, President of Microsoft, urged governments to start adopting facial recognition laws in 2019 and set out six company principles.
Unleash mass surveillance on an unprecedented scale
Brad Smith, President of Microsoft, wrote about government use of facial recognition for continuous tracking of individuals in a December 2018 post on Microsoft On the Issues calling for new laws on the technology.
The illusion that we can master the future through calculations
The Montréal Declaration was drafted through public consultations led by the Université de Montréal and launched in December 2018. The line comes from its preamble.
Conceptually simple and empirically powerful
Jacob Devlin and colleagues at Google AI Language put this paper on arXiv in October 2018, introducing the BERT language model, which obtained new state-of-the-art results on eleven natural language processing tasks.
arXivBERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding
Their new recruiting engine did not like women
Reuters reporter Jeffrey Dastin broke the story of Amazon's experimental resume screening system in October 2018, in the opening line of his report from San Francisco.
ReutersAmazon scraps secret AI recruiting tool that showed bias against women
Models are used in applications that have serious impacts on people’s lives
Margaret Mitchell of Google and co-authors including Timnit Gebru proposed model cards for documenting trained machine learning models in October 2018. The paper appeared at the FAT* 2019 conference in Atlanta.
Now the masses fear irrelevance
Yuval Noah Harari, Israeli historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in his essay "Why Technology Favors Tyranny" on AI, data and democracy for the October 2018 issue of The Atlantic.
Downgraded humans misusing upgraded computers
Yuval Noah Harari, Israeli historian at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, in an essay on AI, data and democracy for the October 2018 issue of The Atlantic, adapted from his book 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.
Elements that required billions of years to be produced
Kate Crawford, co-founder of the AI Now Institute at NYU, and Vladan Joler, of SHARE Foundation in Serbia, published this map and essay on the Amazon Echo in September 2018.
Our technologies are not neutral
Safiya Umoja Noble, assistant professor at USC Annenberg and author of Algorithms of Oppression, was interviewed by Jocelyn Dawson and Rebecca McLeod for The Scholarly Kitchen on behalf of the Society for Scholarly Publishing, July 2018.
Flawed scholarship threatens to mislead the public
Zachary C. Lipton of Carnegie Mellon University and Jacob Steinhardt of Stanford posted this critique of machine learning research practice on arXiv in July 2018, answering a call for papers from the ICML Machine Learning Debates workshop.
Ian Hogarth, a British entrepreneur and investor in machine learning companies, published this essay on his blog in June 2018, after presenting versions of it as a talk for 9 months. It introduced the term AI nationalism.
AI algorithms and datasets can reflect, reinforce, or reduce unfair biases
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, announcing seven principles for the company's AI work in a post on Google's The Keyword blog after employee protests over Project Maven, June 2018.
We are not developing AI for use in weapons
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, in the Keyword blog post announcing seven AI principles and the AI applications Google would not pursue, published after the Project Maven controversy, June 2018.
Ungoverned by ethical or philosophical norms
Henry Kissinger, former US Secretary of State, wrote this essay on artificial intelligence for the June 2018 issue of The Atlantic.
Judea Pearl, Turing Award winning computer scientist at UCLA, in a Q&A with Kevin Hartnett of Quanta Magazine on his book The Book of Why, held at a conference in San Diego and by phone, May 2018.
Quanta MagazineTo Build Truly Intelligent Machines, Teach Them Cause and Effect
We’re going to have robots with free will, absolutely
Judea Pearl, UCLA computer scientist, 2011 Turing Award winner and author of The Book of Why, answering a question on free will in a Quanta Magazine interview, May 2018.
Quanta MagazineTo Build Truly Intelligent Machines, Teach Them Cause and Effect
Judea Pearl, UCLA computer scientist and 2011 Turing Award winner, describing how AI researchers react to his causal reasoning ideas, in a Quanta Magazine interview about his book "The Book of Why", May 2018.
Quanta MagazineTo Build Truly Intelligent Machines, Teach Them Cause and Effect
Over a 5 to 10-year period, we will have A.I. tools
Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg answered senators at a joint hearing of the Senate Judiciary and Commerce committees in April 2018, here replying to Senator Thune's question on how Facebook polices hate speech.
Ensure AGI benefits all of humanity
OpenAI's stated mission.
No standardized process for documenting datasets
Timnit Gebru, then a researcher at Microsoft Research, and six co-authors including Kate Crawford posted this proposal for documenting machine learning datasets on arXiv in March 2018. It was published in CACM in December 2021.
Despite its name, there is nothing “artificial” about this technology
Fei-Fei Li in her March 2018 New York Times op-ed "How to Make A.I. That's Good for People". It is made by humans, she wrote, intended to behave like humans and affects humans.
Algorithms are now doing the curatorial work
Safiya Umoja Noble, assistant professor of communication at USC Annenberg, spoke about her new book Algorithms of Oppression: How Search Engines Reinforce Racism (New York University Press) in a school interview in February 2018.
Darker-skinned females are the most misclassified group
Joy Buolamwini of the MIT Media Lab and Timnit Gebru of Microsoft Research presented this audit of commercial face analysis systems at the FAT* conference in New York in February 2018.
Something more profound than electricity or fire
Sundar Pichai, Google CEO, speaking on AI at the World Economic Forum in Davos, 2018.
World Economic ForumArtificial intelligence could be our saviour, according to the CEO of Google
It's more profound than, I don't know, electricity or fire
Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google, speaking to Recode's Kara Swisher and MSNBC's Ari Melber at a taped television event hosted by MSNBC and Recode, January 2018.
The VergeGoogle CEO Sundar Pichai says AI is more profound than electricity or fire
Gary Marcus, professor of psychology and neural science at New York University, posted this critique of deep learning in January 2018, in his arXiv paper "Deep Learning: A Critical Appraisal".
A degree of control unrivaled in history
Virginia Eubanks, associate professor of political science at the University at Albany, SUNY, published this excerpt from her book Automating Inequality (St. Martin's Press) in Harper's Magazine in January 2018.
- 2017
Term taken from the screen name of a Reddit user, 'deepfakes', who posted face-swapped porn videos made with open-source machine learning tools like TensorFlow; first reported by Vice/Motherboard on 11 Dec 2017.
Given no domain knowledge except the game rules
Abstract of the DeepMind preprint by David Silver and 12 other authors, posted to arXiv, introducing the AlphaZero algorithm, December 2017.
arXivMastering Chess and Shogi by Self-Play with a General Reinforcement Learning Algorithm
Machine learning has become alchemy
Ali Rahimi of Google, accepting the NIPS 2017 Test of Time award for the paper "Random Features for Large-scale Kernel Machines" in December 2017. The speech was written with Ben Recht and published on Recht's blog.
Sutskever to Musk and Altman, 20 Sep 2017: "The goal of OpenAI is to make the future good and to avoid an AGI dictatorship."
Guys, I've had enough. This is the final straw
Elon Musk's nine-minute reply to Sutskever and Brockman's "Honest Thoughts" email, 20 Sep 2017, made public in the lawsuit Elon Musk v. Samuel Altman (2024). He left OpenAI's board in February 2018.
Nothing in the Universe is without limit
Roboticist Rodney Brooks, former director of the MIT AI Lab and cofounder of iRobot, in a September 2017 essay on his own site on mistaken predictions about AI, in the section on imagining magic.
rodneybrooks.com[FoR&AI] The Seven Deadly Sins of Predicting the Future of AI
A faith-based argument, not a scientific argument
Rodney Brooks, roboticist and former MIT AI Lab director, on arguments about future AI that cannot be refuted, in his September 2017 essay The Seven Deadly Sins of Predicting the Future of AI on his blog.
rodneybrooks.com[FoR&AI] The Seven Deadly Sins of Predicting the Future of AI
Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world
Vladimir Putin, Russian President, speaking to students on 1 Sep 2017 in a national televised "open lesson" from Yaroslavl, held on the first day of the school year and expected to be watched by more than a million schoolchildren.
CNNhttps://edition.cnn.com/2017/09/01/world/putin-artificial-intelligence-will-rule-world/index.html
A wide-scale decimation of jobs
Kai-Fu Lee, chairman of Sinovation Ventures in Beijing and former head of Google China, wrote this opinion essay for The New York Times in June 2017.
The New York TimesThe Real Threat of Artificial Intelligence
Title of the 2017 paper that introduced the transformer.
Human-like semantic biases result from the application of standard machine learning
Abstract of the paper by Aylin Caliskan, Joanna Bryson and Arvind Narayanan of Princeton and Bath on bias in word embeddings, published in Science in April 2017; a first version was posted on arXiv in August 2016.
Science / arXivSemantics derived automatically from language corpora contain human-like biases
Algorithms are opinions embedded in code
Data scientist Cathy O'Neil, author of Weapons of Math Destruction, in her TED2017 talk in Vancouver, April 2017, later republished by Naked Capitalism in August 2017.
TED / Naked CapitalismThe era of blind faith in big data must end
An industry that I don't think AI will transform
Andrew Ng, chief scientist at Baidu Research, Coursera co-founder and Stanford teacher, speaking to the Stanford Graduate School of Business community in a series presented by the Stanford MSx Program, March 2017.
Stanford Graduate School of BusinessAndrew Ng: Why AI Is the New Electricity
We’d tax the robot at a similar level
Bill Gates, Microsoft cofounder, answering Kevin J. Delaney of Quartz about a robot tax in an interview published February 2017, after EU lawmakers rejected a proposal to tax robot owners on Feb. 16.
QuartzThe robot that takes your job should pay taxes, says Bill Gates
More fear about what innovation is going to do
Bill Gates, Microsoft cofounder, on public attitudes to automation in a February 2017 Quartz interview with Kevin J. Delaney about taxing robots.
QuartzThe robot that takes your job should pay taxes, says Bill Gates
The status of electronic persons
Paragraph 59(f) of the European Parliament resolution on Civil Law Rules on Robotics, adopted in Strasbourg in February 2017, asking the Commission to consider legal options for liability for damage caused by robots.
Robots aren’t going to try to revolt against humanity
Anca Dragan, assistant professor of EECS at UC Berkeley and co-PI of the Center for Human Compatible AI, commenting on the Value Alignment principle in the Future of Life Institute's write-up of the Asilomar principles, January 2017.
Future of Life InstituteA Principled AI Discussion in Asilomar
The relentless pace of automation
US President Barack Obama in his farewell address in Chicago in January 2017, saying the next wave of economic dislocation would not come from overseas and calling for a new social compact.
Barack Obama Presidential LibraryPresident Obama's Farewell Address
Coined on Reddit in late 2017, from "deep learning" and "fake", for face-swapped videos.
View that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority.
For the benefit of all humanity rather than one state or organization
Principle 23, Common Good, of the 23 Asilomar AI Principles drafted by researchers at the Beneficial AI conference in Pacific Grove, California, and published by the Future of Life Institute in January 2017.
An arms race in lethal autonomous weapons should be avoided
Principle 18 of the 23 principles drafted at the Beneficial AI conference in Asilomar, California, in January 2017 and signed by 1200 AI/Robotics researchers and 2342 others.
- 2016
People should stop training radiologists now
Geoffrey Hinton at the Creative Destruction Lab's Machine Learning and the Market for Intelligence conference, Rotman School of Management, Toronto, 27 October 2016, predicting that deep learning would outperform radiologists within five, perhaps ten years.
Creative Destruction Lab (YouTube)Geoff Hinton: On Radiology
A once-in-a-planet’s-lifetime event
Huw Price, Bertrand Russell Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge and academic director of the Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence, at the centre's launch in Cambridge in October 2016.
Grave dangers given uncritical use
Margaret Boden, AI pioneer and AI researcher at the University of Sussex and advisory board member, spoke at the launch of Cambridge's £10million Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence in October 2016.
The best, or the worst thing, ever to happen to humanity
Physicist Stephen Hawking speaking at the opening of the £10million Leverhulme Centre for the Future of Intelligence in Cambridge, October 2016.
Don't worry as much yet about machines taking over the world
President Barack Obama, interviewed on artificial intelligence by MIT Media Lab director Joi Ito and WIRED editor Scott Dadich for WIRED's guest-edited issue, October 2016.
The American Presidency Project / WIREDInterview with Joi Ito of MIT and Scott Dadich of WIRED
More comfortable talking to computers than to human beings
Joi Ito, director of the MIT Media Lab, speaking with President Obama and WIRED editor Scott Dadich in a WIRED interview on artificial intelligence, October 2016.
The American Presidency Project / WIREDInterview with Joi Ito of MIT and Scott Dadich of WIRED
Guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks
Sam Altman, head of Y Combinator, describing his survival preparations to founders at a YC party in Atherton, in Tad Friend's New Yorker profile, October 2016.
Not just intelligent machines but intelligible machines
Satya Nadella, chief executive of Microsoft, set out principles for AI design in a bylined essay for Slate's Future Tense in June 2016, under the principle that A.I. must be transparent.
The problem of accidents in machine learning systems
Abstract of the arXiv paper "Concrete Problems in AI Safety" by Dario Amodei, Chris Olah, Jacob Steinhardt, Paul Christiano, John Schulman and Dan Mané of Google Brain, OpenAI, Stanford and Berkeley, June 2016.
Small children playing with a bomb
Nick Bostrom, Oxford philosopher and director of the Future of Humanity Institute, in his book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies, 2014. Headline of his June 2016 Guardian interview with Tim Adams.
The GuardianNick Bostrom: 'We are like small children playing with a bomb'
We cannot outsource our responsibilities to machines
Zeynep Tufekci, a techno-sociologist at the University of North Carolina, gave this talk at TEDSummit in June 2016, on how intelligent machines can fail in ways that don't fit human error patterns.
Software used across the country to predict future criminals
Opening summary of the ProPublica investigation by Julia Angwin, Jeff Larson, Surya Mattu and Lauren Kirchner into the COMPAS risk score from Northpointe used in US courts, May 2016.
Deeply sorry for the unintended offensive and hurtful tweets
Peter Lee, corporate vice president of Microsoft Research, wrote this post in March 2016 after the Tay chatbot was taken offline within a day of launch on Twitter, where a coordinated attack exploited a vulnerability in it.
AlphaGo's 37th move in game two against Lee Sedol, 10 March 2016. Commentators took it for a mistake. It won the game.
WIREDThe Two Moves AlphaGo and Lee Sedol Redefined the Future
Playing out the remainder of the game in its imagination
David Silver, Google DeepMind researcher and co-developer of AlphaGo, at the Nature press briefing for the paper reporting AlphaGo's win over European champion Fan Hui by five games to nil, January 2016.
PBS NewsHourGoogle artificial intelligence beats champion at world's most complicated board game
- 2015
Autonomous weapons will become the Kalashnikovs of tomorrow
Open letter from AI and robotics researchers, hosted by the Future of Life Institute, calling for a ban on offensive autonomous weapons, announced at the opening of the IJCAI 2015 conference in Buenos Aires in July 2015.
Future of Life InstituteAutonomous Weapons: An Open Letter from AI & Robotics Researchers
Whatever you see there, I want more of it
Google software engineers Alexander Mordvintsev and Mike Tyka and software engineering intern Christopher Olah described the image technique they called "Inceptionism", later known as DeepDream, in a Google Research blog post, June 2015.
Google Research BlogInceptionism: Going Deeper into Neural Networks
Sam Altman, then president of Y Combinator, quoted by Business Insider in June 2015, before founding OpenAI.
Business InsiderSam Altman Y Combinator talks mega-bubble, nuclear power, and more
Learn representations of data with multiple levels of abstraction
Review article by LeCun (Facebook, NYU), Bengio (Université de Montréal) and Hinton (Google, Toronto) summarising the deep learning field, published in Nature in May 2015.
Their influence can stop people from learning how to live wisely
Pope Francis wrote on the digital world in paragraph 47 of his encyclical Laudato si' on care for our common home, dated May 2015, in the section on the decline in the quality of human life and the breakdown of society.
Not acquired by a mere accumulation of data
Pope Francis, head of the Catholic Church, on media, the digital world and information overload in paragraph 47 of his encyclical Laudato si', May 2015.
There’s something magical about Recurrent Neural Networks
Karpathy, then a PhD student at Stanford, opened his blog post on character-level text generation with recurrent networks in May 2015. With the post he released code on Github for training character-level language models.
Andrej Karpathy blogThe Unreasonable Effectiveness of Recurrent Neural Networks
Title of a book by moral philosopher and bioethicist Peter Singer, published by Yale University Press on April 7, 2015, describing and arguing for the ideas of effective altruism.
I don't worry about the problem of overpopulation on the planet Mars
Andrew Ng, then chief scientist at Baidu and associate professor at Stanford University, speaking at Nvidia's GPU Technology Conference (GTC) in San Jose, California, in March 2015, on fears of evil AI.
The Registerhttps://www.theregister.com/2015/03/19/andrew_ng_baidu_ai/
A superintelligent genie locked up in its bottle forever
Bostrom, director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford, spoke at TED2015 in Vancouver in March 2015, after publishing Superintelligence.
Machines that learn to represent the world
Yann LeCun, director of AI research at Facebook and NYU professor, was asked by IEEE Spectrum's Lee Gomes at his Facebook office in New York City to describe deep learning in eight words. Interview published February 2015.
There is a huge amount of hype in this area
Yann LeCun, director of AI research at Facebook, explained to IEEE Spectrum's Lee Gomes why he avoids comparing deep learning to the brain. Interview published February 2015.
People claimed things they couldn’t deliver
Yann LeCun, head of Facebook's Artificial Intelligence Research Lab and NYU professor, on past AI winters in an IEEE Spectrum interview by Lee Gomes at his Facebook office in New York City, February 2015.
I am in the camp that is concerned about super intelligence
Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates answered a question on machine superintelligence as an existential threat during his third Reddit Ask Me Anything session in January 2015, saying he agreed with Elon Musk and others.
A road we may or may not survive
Tim Urban, writer of the blog Wait But Why, in the first part of his two-part essay on artificial intelligence and superintelligence, January 2015.
Wait But WhyThe AI Revolution: The Road to Superintelligence
Our AI systems must do what we want them to do
Open letter released by the Future of Life Institute after its Puerto Rico conference in January 2015, signed by Stuart Russell, Stephen Hawking, Elon Musk and thousands of AI researchers.
Suffered the syndrome of moving goalposts
Sheizaf Rafaeli, director of the Center for Internet Research at the University of Haifa, Israel, answered the Edge 2015 annual question What do you think about machines that think? in January 2015.
Machines will think when they communicate
Sheizaf Rafaeli, director of the Center for Internet Research at the University of Haifa, Israel, answered the Edge 2015 annual question on machines that think in January 2015, in an essay titled "Thinking Machines Are About Communication".
Feeling is what is most profound about thinking
Mexican writer Andrés Roemer, co-creator of Ideas City and author of Move UP, in his essay Tulips On My Robot's Tomb, answering the Edge 2015 annual question What do you think about machines that think? in January 2015.
Clueless machines being ceded authority far beyond their competence
Daniel C. Dennett, philosopher and co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University, answering the Edge 2015 annual question, What do you think about machines that think?, in January 2015.
It has the earmarks of an urban legend
Daniel C. Dennett, philosopher at Tufts University, wrote about the Singularity in his response to the Edge 2015 annual question "What do you think about machines that think?", January 2015.
I do not believe that machines that think exist
Freeman Dyson, physicist at the Institute for Advanced Study, in his short essay "I Could Be Wrong", answering the Edge 2015 annual question about machines that think in January 2015.
- 2014
Select all squares with traffic lights
Image challenge prompt in Google's reCAPTCHA, whose photo grid arrived with the "no CAPTCHA reCAPTCHA" API in December 2014; humans labelling training data to prove they are human.
Stephen Hawking to the BBC, 2014: full AI "could spell the end of the human race."
BBC NewsStephen Hawking warns artificial intelligence could end mankind
The mythology is the problem, not the algorithms
Jaron Lanier, computer scientist and author of Who Owns the Future?, talking with John Brockman for Edge in November 2014 in response to warnings about AI from Elon Musk and Stephen Hawking.
A mistake to be worrying about us developing malevolent AI
Rodney Brooks, founder of Rethink Robotics and of iRobot, wrote a blog essay, republished on Robohub, replying to warnings about AI in November 2014.
Robohub (originally Rethink Robotics blog)Artificial intelligence is a tool, not a threat
Far more afraid of machine stupidity than of machine intelligence
Sendhil Mullainathan, Harvard economist, replying to Jaron Lanier's Edge conversation The Myth of AI in the Reality Club discussion in November 2014, where he separated machine intelligence from machine decision-making.
Intelligence is not an algorithm
Science historian George Dyson replied to Jaron Lanier's Edge conversation The Myth Of AI in a Reality Club discussion in November 2014, arguing that the brain is an analog computer.
The greatest revolution in analog computing
Science historian George Dyson replied in the Reality Club discussion of Jaron Lanier's Edge conversation The Myth Of AI in November 2014, arguing that analog computing, not digital, is what deserves attention.
A model is not the phenomenon itself
Pamela McCorduck, author of Machines Who Think, replied to Jaron Lanier's Edge conversation The Myth Of AI in Edge's Reality Club discussion, November 2014.
Elon Musk at MIT, 2014: "With artificial intelligence we are summoning the demon."
The GuardianElon Musk: artificial intelligence is our biggest existential threat
We don’t know how neurons learn
Michael I. Jordan, professor at UC Berkeley, spoke about the neuroscience claims made for deep learning in an IEEE Spectrum interview in October 2014. Geoff Hinton later shared his view on the hype but disagreed on other points.
10^58 future people are watching
Nick Bostrom, Superintelligence, 2014: at least 10^58 lives could exist if digital minds count. Turned into a slogan.
Analogous to a team of counterfeiters
Ian Goodfellow, PhD student at Université de Montréal working with Yoshua Bengio, and six co-authors introducing generative adversarial networks in a paper posted to arXiv in June 2014.
The generative model is pitted against an adversary
Ian Goodfellow and coauthors including Yoshua Bengio at Université de Montréal describing the adversarial framework in the introduction of their June 2014 arXiv paper "Generative Adversarial Nets".
Unfortunately, it might also be the last
Op-ed by physicist Stephen Hawking, cowritten with Stuart Russell, Max Tegmark and Frank Wilczek, prompted by the film Transcendence and published in The Independent in May 2014.
Human-level AI is still the proverbial 15-to-25 years away
Steven Pinker, Harvard psychologist, in his signed response in the Reality Club discussion of Jaron Lanier's talk The Myth of AI on Edge.org, late 2014.
Pamela McCorduck, author of the AI history Machines Who Think, in her signed response in the Reality Club discussion of Jaron Lanier's The Myth of AI on Edge.org, late 2014.
- 2013
Nonintuitive characteristics and intrinsic blind spots
Christian Szegedy of Google with coauthors including Ilya Sutskever and Ian Goodfellow, in the December 2013 paper "Intriguing properties of neural networks" (ICLR 2014) that first reported adversarial examples in deep networks.
An imperceptible non-random perturbation to a test image
Christian Szegedy of Google and coauthors describing what became known as adversarial examples, in a paper posted to arXiv in December 2013.
Surpasses a human expert on three of them
Volodymyr Mnih and colleagues at DeepMind Technologies, London, in the paper that introduced the deep Q-network trained on raw pixels of Atari games, posted to arXiv in December 2013 for the NIPS Deep Learning Workshop.
arXiv (NIPS Deep Learning Workshop 2013)Playing Atari with Deep Reinforcement Learning
About 47 percent of total US employment is at risk
Oxford economist Frey and machine learning researcher Osborne estimate how likely 702 US occupations are to be computerised, in a working paper released by the Oxford Martin School in September 2013.
Is intelligence really just a bag of tricks?
Hector Levesque, computer scientist at the University of Toronto, wrote this paper as the text of his Research Excellence Lecture at IJCAI-13 in Beijing, August 2013.
Power is easier to get, harder to use, and easier to lose
From Moisés Naím's 2013 book The End of Power, quoted in a Noema essay about China's approach to controlling AI.
Racing with the machine beats racing against the machine
Brynjolfsson, economist at the MIT Sloan School, spoke at TED2013 in Long Beach about technology, growth and jobs in February 2013.
Brynjolfsson, economist at the MIT Sloan School, in his TED2013 talk on automation and shared prosperity, February 2013. He used the line twice, early in the talk and again before turning to stagnating incomes.
Advertising technology exposes racial bias in society
Latanya Sweeney, Harvard professor of government and technology, studied Google AdSense ads shown for searches of 2184 racially associated names across two websites. Paper dated January 2013.
Technology can do more to thwart discriminatory effects
Latanya Sweeney, Harvard professor, closed her study of racial patterns in Google search ads with this recommendation. Paper dated January 2013, posted on arXiv.
- 2012
Simply by waiting for faster GPUs and bigger datasets
University of Toronto researchers describe the convolutional network, later called AlexNet, that won the ImageNet challenge in 2012 with a top-5 test error rate of 15.3%. Paper presented at NIPS in December 2012.
Pedro Domingos, professor of computer science at the University of Washington, in his Communications of the ACM review of lessons for machine learning practitioners, October 2012.
Communications of the ACMA Few Useful Things to Know about Machine Learning
Is it possible to learn a face detector using only unlabeled images?
Researchers at Google and Stanford describe a network trained on 10 million YouTube frames using 16,000 cores for three days, later known as the Google cat paper. Presented at ICML in Edinburgh, June 2012.
- 2011
Marc Andreessen, cofounder of Netscape and cofounder and general partner of the venture firm Andreessen Horowitz, published this essay in The Wall Street Journal in August 2011, amid debate over whether new Internet companies were a bubble.
The Wall Street Journal (reposted by Andreessen Horowitz)Why Software Is Eating the World
Stranded on the wrong side of software-based disruption
Marc Andreessen, cofounder of Netscape and cofounder and general partner of Andreessen Horowitz, wrote this in his August 2011 Wall Street Journal essay on software reshaping whole industries.
The Wall Street Journal (reposted by Andreessen Horowitz)Why Software Is Eating the World
A notion of success which is I think novel
Linguist Noam Chomsky of MIT, answering Steven Pinker about statistical models of language on a panel at MIT's 150th anniversary symposium on brains, minds and machines, May 2011.
MIT 150 / Language LogBrains, Minds and Machines symposium, Pinker–Chomsky panel (transcript)
May dominate popular discussion, but it’s actually decades out of date
Paul Krugman, Princeton economist and New York Times columnist, in a March 2011 column on software replacing educated workers such as lawyers reviewing documents, written after President Obama called for more investment in education.
The first knowledge-industry workers put out of work
Ken Jennings, the record-holding Jeopardy! champion, wrote this essay for Slate in February 2011, after he and Brad Rutter lost the televised match to IBM's Watson, taped at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Lab in New York.
Ken Jennings, the Jeopardy! champion, wrote this in his Slate essay of February 2011 about losing the man versus machine match to IBM's Watson supercomputer, played with Brad Rutter at an IBM lab.
Something that seems like artificial intelligence can be achieved
Stephen Wolfram, founder of Wolfram Research and Wolfram|Alpha, writing on his blog in January 2011 about IBM's Watson question answering system weeks before its Jeopardy match.
80,000 Hours, a nonprofit career-advice organisation named after the hours in a working life, now especially focused on helping people positively shape the trajectory of AI.
The core aim of effective altruism, the movement named in 2011. Peter Singer's 2015 book is titled The Most Good You Can Do.
EA idea: take a high-paying job and donate a significant portion of it.
Name of a 21st-century philosophical and social movement to do the most good with evidence and reason, coined in 2011 when the Centre for Effective Altruism was named; closely tied to AI safety funding.
Algorithmic modeling describes what does happen
Peter Norvig, director of research at Google, in an essay replying to Noam Chomsky's criticism of statistical machine learning at MIT's 150th anniversary symposium in 2011.
norvig.comOn Chomsky and the Two Cultures of Statistical Learning
We expect more from technology and less from each other
Sherry Turkle, MIT professor of the social studies of science and technology, in the subtitle of her 2011 Basic Books book Alone Together, on sociable robots and networked life.
Basic BooksAlone Together: Why We Expect More from Technology and Less from Each Other
- 2010
They can perform more ethically than human soldiers
Ronald Arkin, Regents' Professor and director of the Mobile Robot Laboratory at Georgia Tech, argued for lethal autonomous robots with built-in ethical constraints in this 2010 Journal of Military Ethics paper.
Journal of Military EthicsThe Case for Ethical Autonomy in Unmanned Systems
Watson is performing at human expert levels
David Ferrucci led the IBM Research DeepQA team. The abstract of the team's AI Magazine paper (Fall 2010 issue) describes Watson ahead of its Jeopardy match. Published July 2010.
AI Magazine (AAAI), vol. 31 no. 3Building Watson: An Overview of the DeepQA Project
One of the most important events in the history of the planet
David Chalmers, a philosopher at the Australian National University and NYU, published this paper in the Journal of Consciousness Studies in 2010, after an invitation to speak at the 2009 Singularity Summit in New York City.
Journal of Consciousness StudiesThe Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis
Very carefully, by building appropriate values into machines
David Chalmers, philosopher at ANU and NYU, answering in the conclusion of his 2010 paper "The Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis" how humanity should handle a possible intelligence explosion.
Journal of Consciousness StudiesThe Singularity: A Philosophical Analysis
- 2009
Simple models and a lot of data trump more elaborate models
Google researchers Alon Halevy, Peter Norvig and Fernando Pereira in the expert opinion column "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data", IEEE Intelligent Systems, March/April 2009.
IEEE Intelligent SystemsThe Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data
Concluding advice of Google researchers Alon Halevy (research scientist), Peter Norvig and Fernando Pereira (research directors) in their article "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data", IEEE Intelligent Systems, March/April 2009.
IEEE Intelligent SystemsThe Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data
Facebook's internal motto until 2014, coined by Mark Zuckerberg. The phrase later became the title of a 2017 book by Jonathan Taplin about how Facebook, Google and Amazon have cornered culture.
- 2008
Our own intelligence that flattens into artificial intelligence
Technology writer Nicholas Carr in his cover essay for The Atlantic, July/August 2008, on how the internet and Google reshape reading and thinking, closing on HAL's disassembly in Kubrick's 2001.
The most human character turns out to be a machine
Technology writer Nicholas Carr discussing Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey at the close of his Atlantic essay "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" of July/August 2008.
Correlation supersedes causation
Wired editor in chief Chris Anderson in his essay for the magazine's Petabyte Age issue, June 2008.
WiredThe End of Theory: The Data Deluge Makes the Scientific Method Obsolete
Rodney Brooks, MIT robotics professor and director of its CSAIL lab, wrote this essay for IEEE Spectrum's special issue on the singularity in June 2008.
A robot that people feel bad about switching off
Rodney Brooks, MIT roboticist and cofounder of iRobot, writing in IEEE Spectrum in June 2008 about robots people would interact with socially, in an essay arguing robot emotions may become indistinguishable from human ones.
Sheer processing power is not a pixie dust
Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker answered IEEE Spectrum's survey of technologists on the Singularity for its special report, June 2008. Asked when the singularity will occur, he answered "Never, ever".
Intelligence is largely defined by experience and training
Jeff Hawkins, cofounder of Numenta and Palm, explained to IEEE Spectrum's Singularity special report in June 2008 why he expected no runaway intelligence explosion.
A spiritual bar mitzvah in some galaxy
Nobel laureate Gerald Edelman, director of the Neurosciences Institute in San Diego, speaking of the Singularity to John Horgan for his essay The Consciousness Conundrum in IEEE Spectrum's Singularity special report, June 2008.
Complex enough to conjure fantasies of technotranscendence
Science journalist John Horgan, author of The Undiscovered Mind, wrote this essay for IEEE Spectrum's Singularity special report in June 2008, arguing that singularity enthusiasts underestimate the brain's complexity.
A future shock to end future shocks
George Mason University economist Robin Hanson described human-level machine intelligence as a possible economic singularity in an essay for IEEE Spectrum's Special Report: The Singularity, June 2008.
Human labor would no longer earn most income
Robin Hanson, associate professor of economics at George Mason University, on wages in an economy of human-level robots, in his essay Economics Of The Singularity for IEEE Spectrum's Singularity special report, June 2008.
No reason why consciousness can’t be reproduced in a machine
Neuroscientists Christof Koch of Caltech and Giulio Tononi of the University of Wisconsin wrote this article on whether machines can be conscious for IEEE Spectrum's Singularity special report in June 2008.
The emperor isn’t wearing anything
Glenn Zorpette, an editor at IEEE Spectrum, wrote the opening essay of the magazine's Singularity special report, May 2008, about claims of mind uploading and Ray Kurzweil's view that some people alive today will live indefinitely.
It will resist being turned off
Stephen Omohundro, computer scientist and founder of Self-Aware Systems, presented this paper at the first Artificial General Intelligence conference in Memphis in March 2008. The sentence is about a chess-playing robot.
IOS Press (Proceedings of the First AGI Conference, AGI-08)The Basic AI Drives
AI systems with harmless goals will be harmless
Computer scientist Stephen Omohundro of Self-Aware Systems, in a paper for the first conference on artificial general intelligence in Memphis, February 2008. He opens the abstract with this idea in order to argue against it.
Proceedings of the First AGI Conference, IOS PressThe Basic AI Drives
LessWrong maxim from Eliezer Yudkowsky's January 2008 post "Circular Altruism", first published on Overcoming Bias: when the numbers are large, trust the arithmetic over the gut. The post is linked in the Effective Altruism Handbook.
People conclude too early that they understand it
Eliezer Yudkowsky of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence opens his chapter in the 2008 Oxford volume Global Catastrophic Risks, edited by Nick Bostrom and Milan M. Ćirković, with this sentence.
- 2007
Universal intelligence is in no way anthropocentric
Shane Legg, then a PhD researcher at IDSIA in Switzerland and later a DeepMind cofounder, and Marcus Hutter proposed a formal definition of machine intelligence in December 2007.
arXiv / Minds and MachinesUniversal Intelligence: A Definition of Machine Intelligence
Kurzweil’s desperate hopes seriously cloud his scientific objectivity
Cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter of Indiana University, interviewed by Tal Cohen in September 2007 after publishing I Am a Strange Loop, answering a question on Ray Kurzweil's view of uploading minds.
Tal Cohen's BookshelfAn Interview with Douglas R. Hofstadter, following I am a Strange Loop
The end of humanity as we know it
Cognitive scientist Douglas Hofstadter on mind uploading and the Singularity, answering Tal Cohen's question about Ray Kurzweil's vision in an interview following his book I Am a Strange Loop, September 2007.
Tal Cohen's BookshelfAn Interview with Douglas R. Hofstadter, following I am a Strange Loop
Robots decide who, where and when to kill
Noel Sharkey, professor of AI and robotics at the University of Sheffield, in a Guardian opinion piece in August 2007 on armed autonomous robots, written after the first armed battlefield robots were deployed in Iraq.
CAPTCHA prompt of reCAPTCHA, a system developed at Carnegie Mellon University and released in May 2007, acquired by Google in 2009. It reverses Turing's imitation game: a machine checks whether you are human.
The original robot is already in a museum
Berkeley philosopher Hubert Dreyfus on Cog, the humanoid robot project of Rodney Brooks and Daniel Dennett at MIT, in a 2007 paper for the journal Artificial Intelligence.
The whole AI research program was degenerating
Berkeley philosopher Hubert Dreyfus recalling his critique of symbolic AI, begun after RAND invited him in 1963 to evaluate Newell and Simon's work, in a 2007 paper for the journal Artificial Intelligence.
- 2006
There is a single basic learning algorithm
Geoffrey Hinton, professor at the University of Toronto and CIFAR fellow, opening a technical report on deep generative learning, October 2006, later published in Progress in Brain Research in 2007.
- 2005
Ray Kurzweil, inventor and futurist, in his book The Singularity Is Near (Viking, September 2005), giving his year for the singularity.
Title of inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil's book The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, published by Viking in September 2005. He set the date at 2045; a sequel, The Singularity Is Nearer, followed in June 2024.
- 2003
We are almost certainly living in a computer simulation
Nick Bostrom, philosopher at Oxford, set out the simulation argument in this paper, published in Philosophical Quarterly in April 2003 after a 2001 draft.
Philosophical QuarterlyAre You Living in a Computer Simulation?
Thought experiment described by Nick Bostrom in 2003: a superintelligence told to make paperclips turns the Earth, then space, into paperclip factories. Eliezer Yudkowsky used the idea the same year.
Nick Bostrom's thought experiment from his 2003 paper "Ethical Issues in Advanced Artificial Intelligence": an AI told to make paperclips converts everything into paperclips. Eliezer Yudkowsky also mentioned it in a March 2003 post.
nickbostrom.comEthical Issues in Advanced Artificial Intelligence
- 2002
Qualities of the human condition no machine is going to successfully emulate
Mitchell Kapor, founder of Lotus and co-founder of the EFF, in his argument for the first Long Bet, a $20,000 wager against Ray Kurzweil on the Turing test, 2002.
Whether a computer can successfully impersonate a human
Mitchell Kapor, founder of Lotus, opening his case in the Long Now Foundation wager against Ray Kurzweil over the Turing test by 2029, made in 2002. The $20,000 stakes go to the Electronic Frontier Foundation if Kapor wins.
- 2000
On the outside of its resplendent dogma
Jaron Lanier, computer scientist and virtual reality pioneer, published this critique of cybernetic totalism and AI dogma on Edge in September 2000. It was reprinted in Wired that December.
Threatening to make humans an endangered species
Bill Joy, cofounder and chief scientist of Sun Microsystems, wrote this essay for the April 2000 issue of Wired magazine. John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid replied to it in The Industry Standard.
On the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil
Bill Joy, cofounder and chief scientist of Sun Microsystems, warned about robotics, genetics and nanotechnology in this Wired cover essay in April 2000. John Seely Brown and Paul Duguid replied in The Industry Standard.
Focuses on technology in splendid isolation
John Seely Brown, chief scientist of Xerox and director of Xerox PARC, and Paul Duguid of UC Berkeley, replying to Bill Joy's Wired essay "Why the Future Doesn't Need Us" in spring 2000.
The Industry StandardA Response to Bill Joy and the Doom-and-Gloom Technofuturists
Google's former corporate motto, first suggested by employee Paul Buchheit around 2000 or 2001 (or by engineer Amit Patel in 1999), used in the 2004 IPO prospectus and dropped from the code of conduct preface in 2018.
- 1999
Against the natural order of things
Douglas Adams, British author of The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, in his essay "How to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet" for the News Review section of The Sunday Times, August 1999.
The Sunday TimesHow to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet
We still don’t really understand what it is
Douglas Adams, British author and early web enthusiast, on public confusion about the new internet, in an essay for the News Review section of The Sunday Times, August 1999.
The Sunday TimesHow to Stop Worrying and Learn to Love the Internet
- 1998
No learning technique can succeed without a minimal amount of prior knowledge
Yann LeCun and colleagues at AT&T Labs, in their November 1998 paper on convolutional networks for reading handwritten digits and bank checks.
Proceedings of the IEEEGradient-Based Learning Applied to Document Recognition
Rely more on real data and less on hand-crafted feature extraction
Yann LeCun and colleagues at AT&T Labs explaining why learning from data was overtaking hand-built pattern recognition, in their November 1998 paper.
Proceedings of the IEEEGradient-Based Learning Applied to Document Recognition
Inherently biased towards the advertisers
Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, Stanford PhD students, wrote this in Appendix A, "Advertising and Mixed Motives", of their paper describing the Google prototype, presented in Brisbane in April 1998.
Search engine bias is particularly insidious
Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, Stanford PhD students, wrote this in Appendix A, "Advertising and Mixed Motives", of their 1998 paper introducing the Google search engine prototype, presented at WWW7.
A thinking presence in machinery will become increasingly widespread
Hans Moravec, robotics researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, wrote this in a 1998 paper in the Journal of Evolution and Technology estimating when computer hardware would match the processing power of the human brain.
Journal of Evolution and Technology, Vol. 1When will computer hardware match the human brain?
Computers suitable for humanlike robots will appear in the 2020s
Hans Moravec, robotics researcher at Carnegie Mellon University, gave this forecast from a graph of computing power per dollar in his 1998 journal paper.
Journal of Evolution and Technology, Vol. 1When will computer hardware match the human brain?
- 1997
Deep Blue passed the Turing test
Charles Krauthammer, columnist, in his Weekly Standard essay "Be Afraid" after Deep Blue beat Garry Kasparov in their May 1997 rematch, issue dated May 26, 1997. He points to Game Two, played May 4 in New York.
The world’s best chess player vs. Garry Kasparov
Louis Gerstner, chairman and chief executive of IBM, on the Deep Blue rematch with Kasparov in May 1997, quoted as the epigraph of Charles Krauthammer's essay "Be Afraid" in The Weekly Standard.
Philip E. Agre, an MIT AI Lab PhD then at the UCLA Department of Information Studies, wrote this 1997 chapter for the volume Bridging the Great Divide on why he broke with mainstream AI research.
AI has never had much of a reflexive critical practice
Philip E. Agre, a UCLA information studies scholar trained at the MIT AI Lab, opened his 1997 book chapter "Toward a Critical Technical Practice" with this account of the field he tried to reform from within.
- 1996
I could smell a new kind of intelligence across the table
Garry Kasparov, world chess champion, wrote this essay for Time after his February 1996 match against IBM's Deep Blue in Philadelphia. In it he recalls game one, on Feb. 10, 1996. Published in the March 25, 1996 issue.
A weird kind, an inefficient, inflexible kind
Garry Kasparov, world chess champion, closed his March 1996 Time essay with this judgement of Deep Blue after winning their first match 4 to 2. Deep Blue had won the first game on Feb. 10, 1996.
Could Deep Blue ever feel deeply blue?
Robert Wright, science writer, in his Time cover story on Deep Blue and the debate over machine consciousness, March 25, 1996, written after Garry Kasparov's narrow escape from defeat by IBM's Deep Blue.
The lights are on, but is anyone home?
Robert Wright, science writer, framing the question of computer consciousness in his Time cover story after the first Kasparov and Deep Blue match, March 1996.
Charles Krauthammer, columnist and Time essayist, on Deep Blue winning Game 1 against Garry Kasparov in Philadelphia, in Time's issue of February 26, 1996. Kasparov went on to win the match.
Yasser Seirawan, American chess grandmaster, explaining Deep Blue's Game 1 win over Kasparov in Philadelphia, as quoted by Charles Krauthammer in Time, February 1996.
I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind
John Perry Barlow, cofounder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote this declaration in Davos on 8 February 1996 in response to the US Telecommunications Act.
Electronic Frontier FoundationA Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
We will create a civilization of the Mind in Cyberspace
John Perry Barlow, cofounder of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, closed his declaration written in Davos in February 1996 with this line. The declaration responded to the US Telecommunications Reform Act.
Electronic Frontier FoundationA Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
- 1995
Rosalind Picard, a professor at the MIT Media Lab, wrote this in the abstract of her technical report Affective Computing, revised in November 1995, which named and defined the field.
With too much emotion, we, the maker, may be eliminated
Rosalind Picard, assistant professor at the MIT Media Lab, wrote this in the conclusion of her 1995 technical report. The report named and defined the field of affective computing.
People will let machines make more of their decisions
Theodore Kaczynski, then the anonymous Unabomber, wrote this in the manifesto that The Washington Post printed in September 1995. Bill Joy and Ray Kurzweil later quoted the passage.
No practical choice but to accept all of the machines' decisions
Theodore Kaczynski, then the anonymous Unabomber, wrote this in the manifesto that The Washington Post printed in September 1995, in a passage on dependence on machines (paragraph 173, section "The future").
No online database will replace your daily newspaper
Clifford Stoll, an astronomer and author of The Cuckoo's Egg, wrote this in a Newsweek column of February 1995, "Why the Web Won't Be Nirvana", that was sceptical about the internet after his two decades online.
Agents make people redefine themselves into lesser beings
Jaron Lanier, computer scientist and virtual reality pioneer, criticised so-called intelligent software agents in this 1995 essay.
You change yourself in order to make the agent look smart
Jaron Lanier, computer scientist and virtual reality pioneer, wrote this 1995 essay, Agents of Alienation, in the Journal of Consciousness Studies on how software agents change their human users.
Mechanical ones will have to be invented
Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron, media theorists at the Hypermedia Research Centre, University of Westminster, London, in their 1995 essay The Californian Ideology, a critique of Silicon Valley's techno-utopian politics.
Obtain slave-like labour from inanimate machines
Richard Barbrook and Andy Cameron of the University of Westminster, London, on the search for artificial intelligence as a dream of mechanical servants, in their essay The Californian Ideology, 1995.
- 1994
Machines are becoming biological
Kevin Kelly, executive editor of Wired, in chapter 1, The Made and the Born, of his 1994 book Out of Control, after describing his stay in a sealed glass test module for living in space, on technology and life merging.
Addison-WesleyOut of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World
It will not be a world of gray steel
Kevin Kelly, executive editor of Wired, wrote this in chapter 1, "The Made and the Born", of his 1994 book Out of Control, predicting a neo-biological civilization.
Addison-WesleyOut of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World
- 1993
Shortly after, the human era will be ended
Vernor Vinge, mathematician at San Diego State University and science fiction author, presented this essay at the NASA VISION-21 Symposium in March 1993. A slightly changed version was reprinted in Whole Earth Review that winter.
I'll be surprised if this event occurs before 2005 or after 2030
Vernor Vinge, mathematician at San Diego State University and science fiction author, gave this timing for the arrival of greater-than-human intelligence in his VISION-21 Symposium paper of March 1993, later in Whole Earth Review.
- 1992
The computer claims sovereignty over the whole range of human experience
Neil Postman, media critic and chair of the Department of Communication Arts and Sciences at New York University, in the chapter "Computer Technology" of Technopoly, his 1992 book on how technology came to dominate American culture.
Alfred A. KnopfTechnopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology
Machines cannot feel and, just as important, cannot understand
Neil Postman, media critic at New York University, in the chapter "Computer Technology" of his 1992 book Technopoly, discussing artificial intelligence, Weizenbaum and ELIZA.
Alfred A. KnopfTechnopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology
- 1991
The most profound technologies are those that disappear
Mark Weiser, head of the Computer Science Laboratory at Xerox PARC, opened his September 1991 Scientific American article "The Computer for the 21st Century" on ubiquitous computing with this sentence.
As refreshing as taking a walk in the woods
Mark Weiser, head of the Computer Science Laboratory at Xerox PARC, wrote this near the end of his September 1991 Scientific American article on ubiquitous computing, arguing it would help overcome information overload.
Explicit representations and models of the world simply get in the way
Rodney Brooks of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory set out his case against central world models in AI in "Intelligence without representation", Artificial Intelligence 47 (1991), a paper received in September 1987.
Artificial Intelligence (Elsevier)Intelligence without representation
- 1990
The world is its own best model
Rodney Brooks, roboticist at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, argued for physically grounded robots over symbolic AI in this 1990 paper, "Elephants Don't Play Chess", in Robotics and Autonomous Systems.
Robotics and Autonomous Systems (Elsevier)Elephants Don't Play Chess
- 1988
Programs wanting things, knowing things, expecting things, believing things
Dijkstra, professor of computer sciences at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote this essay on computing education in December 1988, arguing against anthropomorphic terms for programs and machines.
Better described as an expert's system than as an expert system
Harold Cohen, painter in the Department of Visual Arts at the University of California, San Diego, describing his drawing program AARON, under development for nearly fifteen years, in a paper for the AAAI conference, August 1988.
Proceedings of AAAI-88, AAAIHow to Draw Three People in a Botanical Garden
- 1987
One of us will have to eat our words
Rodney A. Brooks, roboticist at the MIT AI Lab, in Working Paper 303 of September 1987, a reply to Drew McDermott comparing traditional AI planning with his reflexive subsumption architectures for real robots.
- 1985
The same relation to intelligence as artificial flowers have to flowers
Parnas, a software engineer, resigned from the SDI Organization's Panel on Computing in Support of Battle Management in 1985. His essays explaining why were published in Communications of the ACM in December 1985.
Communications of the ACMSoftware Aspects of Strategic Defense Systems
Heuristic techniques do not yield systems that one can trust
Parnas wrote this after resigning from the Strategic Defense Initiative's battle management computing panel. In this section he weighs AI and expert systems as a fix for the SDI software problem. Published December 1985.
Communications of the ACMSoftware Aspects of Strategic Defense Systems
Our machines are disturbingly lively
Haraway, a historian of science at the University of California, Santa Cruz, published the essay "A Cyborg Manifesto" in Socialist Review in 1985, writing about how the line between organism and machine had broken down.
Pre-cybernetic machines could be haunted
Haraway, a historian of science at UC Santa Cruz, describes the second of the boundaries she called leaky, between animal-human and machine, in her 1985 essay "A Cyborg Manifesto" in Socialist Review.
- 1984
You can't trust code that you did not totally create yourself
Thompson, co-creator of Unix at Bell Labs, gave this as his ACM Turing Award lecture in October 1983. It was published in Communications of the ACM, Vol. 27, No. 8, in August 1984.
- 1983
It does not believe that it is a thermostat
McCarthy, an AI pioneer at Stanford University, argued in this 1983 popular article that ascribing simple mental states to machines can be useful, using the thermostat of an electric blanket as his example.
Just three possible thoughts or beliefs
McCarthy, professor of computer science at Stanford University, on what it means to say a machine believes something, using a blanket thermostat as example, in a 1983 article for general readers.
- 1982
Most people think computers will never be able to think
Marvin Minsky, cofounder of the MIT AI Lab, opening his essay "Why People Think Computers Can't" in AI Magazine, fall 1982. It was later reprinted in Technology Review, Nov/Dec 1983.
Questions about thinking machines should really be questions about our own minds
Minsky, cofounder of the MIT AI Lab, answered common objections to machine thought in this AI Magazine essay of fall 1982.
- 1981
Term first used by Bud Tribble at Apple Computer in 1981 for co-founder Steve Jobs's charisma and its effects on the Macintosh developers. Commentators on Sam Altman have applied it to him.
- 1980
I do not understand a word of the Chinese stories
Searle, a Berkeley philosopher, describes himself following English rules to answer questions in Chinese inside a locked room, the thought experiment at the heart of his September 1980 article in Behavioral and Brain Sciences.
To confuse simulation with duplication
John R. Searle, philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley, set out the Chinese room argument against strong AI in this target article in The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, September 1980.
The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, vol. 3Minds, brains, and programs
One of the wrongest, most infuriating articles I have ever read
Hofstadter, computer scientist at Indiana University and author of Gödel, Escher, Bach, wrote this signed commentary, "Reductionism and religion", on Searle's Chinese room article in The Behavioral and Brain Sciences, September 1980.
Searle's arguments, which I consider sophistry
Daniel Dennett, philosopher then at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, answered Searle's Chinese room in a signed BBS commentary, "The milk of human intentionality", in September 1980.
It doesn't count as fooling any more
Richard Rorty, philosopher at Princeton University, wrote a signed commentary, "Searle and the special powers of the brain", on Searle's Chinese room article in The Behavioral and Brain Sciences in September 1980.
- 1976
The 1960s technology of moralistic invective
Stanford AI researcher John McCarthy reviewed Joseph Weizenbaum's 1975 book Computer Power and Human Reason in the SIGART Newsletter in 1976, answering its moral critique of artificial intelligence research.
SIGART Newsletter; author's Stanford pageAn Unreasonable Book
McDermott was a researcher at the MIT AI Lab. He wrote this critique of his own field's habits, the essay "Artificial Intelligence Meets Natural Stupidity", for the SIGART Newsletter, issue 57, in April 1976.
ACM SIGART NewsletterArtificial Intelligence Meets Natural Stupidity
A particularly stupid program to solve puzzles
McDermott, of the MIT AI Lab, was discussing what he called wishful mnemonics, taking Newell and Simon's General Problem Solver as his example. SIGART Newsletter, April 1976.
ACM SIGART NewsletterArtificial Intelligence Meets Natural Stupidity
Symbols lie at the root of intelligent action
Allen Newell and Herbert A. Simon of Carnegie-Mellon University gave the tenth ACM Turing Award lecture jointly in October 1975; it was published in Communications of the ACM in March 1976.
Communications of the ACMComputer Science as Empirical Inquiry: Symbols and Search
- 1974
One selects from memory a structure called a Frame
Marvin Minsky, co-director of the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, set out his theory of frames in this lab memo (MIT-AI Laboratory Memo 306) in June 1974.
MIT Artificial Intelligence LaboratoryA Framework for Representing Knowledge (MIT AI Memo 306)
Lighthill had his shot at AI and missed
John McCarthy, Stanford AI pioneer, reviewed James Lighthill's 1973 report to the UK Science Research Council, which led to cuts in British AI funding. The review appeared in the journal Artificial Intelligence in 1974.
The computer and electronics people are like generals
Ted Nelson, hypertext pioneer and coiner of the word hypertext, wrote this in the introduction to the Dream Machines half of his self-published 1974 book on computers for ordinary people.
Self-published (Hugo's Book Service)Computer Lib/Dream Machines
The computer is not a limitless partner
From Ted Nelson's introduction to Dream Machines in his self-published 1974 book Computer Lib/Dream Machines, which argued that computers would soon enter every medium and that their design should serve people.
Self-published (Hugo's Book Service)Computer Lib/Dream Machines
- 1973
The general purpose robot, then, is a mirage
Sir James Lighthill, Lucasian Professor at Cambridge and author of the 1972 Science Research Council report on AI, debated Michie, McCarthy and Gregory at the Royal Institution for BBC television in May 1973.
BBCControversy: The General Purpose Robot is a Mirage (Lighthill debate transcript)
Excellent for rich people with complicated programs to write
Roger Needham of the Computer Laboratory, University of Cambridge, who basically agreed with Lighthill's conclusions. He wrote this reply on the Lighthill report and Sutherland's response for the SRC volume published in 1973.
People can be equally enslaved by their tools
Illich, Austrian-born priest and social critic based at CIDOC in Cuernavaca, Mexico, argued in this 1973 book that industrial tools and machines come to control the people who use them.
More than likely to inflict multiple injuries on human society
Christopher Longuet-Higgins, head of the Theoretical Psychology Unit at the University of Edinburgh, wrote this response to the Lighthill report and Sutherland's reply for the Science Research Council symposium of 1973.
The light it can throw upon human intellectual activity
Christopher Longuet-Higgins of the Theoretical Psychology Unit, University of Edinburgh, replying to James Lighthill's survey of AI and Sutherland's reply in the 1973 Science Research Council paper symposium.
It will be essential to import American machines
Donald Michie of the University of Edinburgh, founder of the longest-established British AI research group, on British AI research falling behind the United States, in his reply within the 1973 SRC Lighthill symposium.
Mathematical formalisms fail to capture the significant features of intelligent behaviour
Stuart Sutherland, professor of experimental psychology at the University of Sussex, wrote Part II of the 1973 SRC Lighthill symposium in reply to Lighthill's survey of AI.
Must throw some light on human intelligence
Stuart Sutherland of the University of Sussex arguing for basic AI research, Lighthill's "area B", in his reply to James Lighthill's survey for the Science Research Council, SRC paper symposium, 1973.
- 1972
Ready or not, computers are coming to the people
Stewart Brand, who edited the Whole Earth Catalog from 1968 to 1971, reported on hackers at Xerox PARC and the Stanford AI Lab for Rolling Stone in December 1972, opening his Spacewar story with this line.
Rolling StoneSpacewar: Fanatic Life and Symbolic Death Among the Computer Bums
The attack on artificial intelligence is not well reasoned
Bruce G. Buchanan, researcher at the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Project, reviewed Hubert Dreyfus's 1972 book What Computers Can't Do (Harper & Row) in this memo, AIM-181, of November 1972.
Man is much more than a tool builder
Alan Kay, researcher at Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, set out the Dynabook idea of a portable personal computer in this paper for the ACM conference in Boston, August 1972.
Proceedings of the ACM National Conference, BostonA Personal Computer for Children of All Ages
As with most gadgets in unenlightened hands, a terrible drudge
Alan Kay of Xerox PARC describing what a personal computer for children could become, in his Dynabook paper for the ACM National Conference in Boston, August 1972.
Proceedings of the ACM National Conference, BostonA Personal Computer for Children of All Ages
The major impact that was then promised
Lighthill was Lucasian Professor of Applied Mathematics at Cambridge. The Science Research Council asked him for this survey, dated July 1972 and published in 1973. It led to deep cuts in British AI funding.
Science Research Council (UK)Artificial Intelligence: A General Survey
Hubert Dreyfus, philosopher at the University of California, Berkeley, published this critique of artificial intelligence research in 1972, building on his earlier RAND paper. Bruce Buchanan of Stanford reviewed it in November 1972.
Harper & RowWhat Computers Can't Do: A Critique of Artificial Reason
- 1971
Audi's slogan since 1971. The only non-English line in this collection.
- 1970
The premature arrival of the future
Alvin Toffler, American writer and futurist, defining the book's central idea, "future shock", in his 1970 study of rapid technological change, Future Shock (Random House).
- 1969
Coca-Cola, 1969.
- 1968
I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that
HAL 9000, 1968.
A technological revolution with the impact of automation and cybernation
Martin Luther King Jr., civil rights leader, in his last Sunday sermon, "Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution", from the Canterbury Pulpit of Washington National Cathedral on 31 March 1968.
Washington National Cathedral (sermon transcript)Remaining Awake Through a Great Revolution
- 1967
Machine learning techniques to many problems of economic importance
Arthur Samuel, IBM researcher then at Stanford, ended his 1967 follow-up paper on his self-learning checkers program with this conclusion. It appeared in the IBM Journal of Research and Development, November 1967.
The program maintains the illusion of understanding
Joseph Weizenbaum, MIT computer scientist and creator of ELIZA, wrote this follow-up paper on the DOCTOR script, published in August 1967.
Communications of the ACM, Vol. 10, No. 8Contextual Understanding by Computers
No human understands any other human
Joseph Weizenbaum, MIT computer scientist and author of ELIZA, discussing what machine understanding could mean in his paper Contextual Understanding by Computers, Communications of the ACM, August 1967.
Communications of the ACMContextual Understanding by Computers
All watched over by machines of loving grace
Richard Brautigan's poem, written in January 1967 while he was poet-in-residence at the California Institute of Technology. Dario Amodei borrowed its title for his 2024 essay "Machines of Loving Grace".
- 1966
Joseph Weizenbaum, MIT computer scientist, opened his January 1966 paper in Communications of the ACM (vol. 9, no. 1) describing ELIZA, his conversation program running on MIT's MAC time-sharing system.
- 1965
A bullet displayed in such a room would be fatal
Ivan Sutherland, then head of the Information Processing Techniques Office at ARPA, in his paper "The Ultimate Display" given at the IFIP Congress in New York in May 1965.
A looking glass into a mathematical wonderland
Ivan E. Sutherland of the Information Processing Techniques Office, ARPA, describing displays connected to digital computers in his paper The Ultimate Display, IFIP Congress, New York, May 1965.
Integrated circuits will lead to such wonders as home computers
Gordon Moore, director of the research and development laboratories at Fairchild Semiconductor, wrote this article, "Cramming more components onto integrated circuits", for Electronics magazine in April 1965.
Electronics, Vol. 38, No. 8Cramming more components onto integrated circuits
Term from I. J. Good's 1965 paper "Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine", a scenario of machines improving machines and the most popular version of the singularity hypothesis.
The last invention that man need ever make
I. J. Good, 1965: an ultraintelligent machine could design better machines, so it would be the last invention humans need make.
Advances in ComputersSpeculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent Machine
- 1964
The mechanical brain comes to the aid of the spiritual brain
Pope Paul VI addressing the staff of Roberto Busa's computing centre at the Aloysianum in Gallarate, which was building the Index Thomisticus with IBM machines, at an audience on 19 June 1964. Translated from Italian.
Cybernation is already reorganizing the economic and social system
Memorandum sent to President Lyndon Johnson in March 1964 by a group of activists, economists and scientists, on automation, weaponry and civil rights. Reprinted in International Socialist Review, Summer 1964.
The Machines-and-Man drama will first be played
Memorandum sent to President Lyndon Johnson in March 1964 by a group of activists, economists and scientists, on how the United States would face cybernation. Reprinted in International Socialist Review, Summer 1964.
Norbert Wiener, MIT mathematician and founder of cybernetics, in his last book, published in 1964, on machines that learn and reproduce and the moral problems they raise.
MIT PressGod and Golem, Inc.: A Comment on Certain Points where Cybernetics Impinges on Religion
Automation indeed appears to be the great catalyst
Herbert Marcuse, German American philosopher of the Frankfurt School teaching at Brandeis University, in the section 'Prospects of Containment' of his book One-Dimensional Man, published by Beacon Press in 1964.
Beacon PressOne-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
Technological rationality has become political rationality
Philosopher Herbert Marcuse in the introduction to One-Dimensional Man, his 1964 critique of advanced industrial society published by Beacon Press.
Beacon PressOne-Dimensional Man: Studies in the Ideology of Advanced Industrial Society
- 1962
Warrant full pursuit by an enlightened society
Douglas Engelbart, researcher at Stanford Research Institute, wrote this summary report (AFOSR-3233) for the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research in October 1962, setting out a program to extend human intellect with computers.
Automation, of course, is replacing men
President John F. Kennedy answered a question about Labor Department estimates that approximately 1.8 million persons holding jobs are replaced every year by machines, at a news conference at the State Department on 14 February 1962.
The American Presidency Project, UC Santa BarbaraThe President's News Conference, February 14, 1962
- 1961
Quite possibly dominated, by intelligent problem-solving machines
Marvin Minsky, mathematician at MIT and co-organiser of the 1956 Dartmouth project, wrote this survey of heuristic programming for the January 1961 computers issue of the Proceedings of the IRE.
Intelligent machines may be reluctant to believe
Marvin Minsky, MIT mathematician and co-founder of its AI project, in the section on models of oneself in his survey of heuristic programming in the Proceedings of the IRE, January 1961.
- 1960
Machines can and do transcend some of the limitations of their designers
Norbert Wiener, MIT mathematician and founder of cybernetics, wrote this article on learning machines and control for Science in May 1960, adapted from his lecture of 27 December 1959 at the AAAS meeting in Chicago.
Science, Vol. 131, No. 3410Some Moral and Technical Consequences of Automation
We may not know, until too late, when to turn it off
Norbert Wiener, MIT mathematician and founder of cybernetics, in an essay on the risks of fast learning machines published in Science in May 1960.
Think as no human brain has ever thought
J. C. R. Licklider, psychologist at Bolt Beranek and Newman, set out his vision of humans and computers working together in this March 1960 paper.
IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, HFE-1Man-Computer Symbiosis
Much more effectively than man alone can perform them
J. C. R. Licklider, psychologist at Bolt Beranek and Newman, wrote this summary of his paper "Man-Computer Symbiosis", published in IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics in March 1960.
IRE Transactions on Human Factors in Electronics, HFE-1Man-Computer Symbiosis
- 1959
This little computer I carry in my head
Caltech physicist Richard Feynman comparing face recognition by people and by machines in his American Physical Society talk at Caltech, 29 December 1959.
Caltech Engineering and ScienceThere's Plenty of Room at the Bottom
A computer can be programmed so that it will learn
Abstract of the paper by IBM researcher Arthur Samuel on his self-improving checkers program, published in the IBM Journal of Research and Development in July 1959. A follow-up paper appeared in the same journal in November 1967.
IBM Journal of Research and DevelopmentSome Studies in Machine Learning Using the Game of Checkers
Programs that learn from their experience as effectively as humans do
John McCarthy, then at MIT and coiner of the term artificial intelligence, proposed the advice taker program in this paper for the Teddington symposium on the mechanisation of thought processes, November 1958, published 1959.
Mechanisation of Thought Processes, Her Majesty's Stationery OfficePrograms with Common Sense
- 1958
Belongs in the Journal of Half-Baked Ideas
Yehoshua Bar-Hillel, logician at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, responding to John McCarthy's advice taker paper "Programs with Common Sense" at the Teddington symposium of the National Physical Laboratory, November 1958.
A society of laborers without labor
Hannah Arendt, political theorist, wrote about the coming of automation in the prologue to The Human Condition, published in 1958.
- 1956
INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER
Short story by the American writer and biochemist Isaac Asimov, first published in Science Fiction Quarterly in November 1956, in which the computer Multivac is asked whether entropy can be reversed.
Words spoken by the cosmic computer AC near the end of Isaac Asimov's short story The Last Question, published in Science Fiction Quarterly in November 1956. AC finally answers after the end of the universe.
- 1955
Every aspect of learning or any other feature of intelligence
In this proposal dated August 1955, four researchers from Dartmouth, Harvard, IBM and Bell Labs asked the Rockefeller Foundation for funding for a 2 month, 10 man summer study of artificial intelligence at Dartmouth College in 1956.
Solve kinds of problems now reserved for humans
Proposal of 31 August 1955 by McCarthy (Dartmouth), Minsky (Harvard), Rochester (IBM) and Shannon (Bell Labs) asking the Rockefeller Foundation to fund a 2 month, 10 man study of artificial intelligence at Dartmouth in summer 1956.
Von Neumann was a mathematician at the Institute for Advanced Study and a member of the Atomic Energy Commission. He wrote this essay, "Can We Survive Technology?", on the dangers of fast technological growth for Fortune in June 1955.
Technology—like science—is neutral all through
John von Neumann, mathematician and member of the US Atomic Energy Commission, wrote this essay, "Can We Survive Technology?", on the risks of accelerating technology for Fortune in June 1955.
- 1954
American writer Fredric Brown published this very short story about a computer linking all the populated planets in the universe that is asked whether there is a God in his 1954 collection Angels and Spaceships.
- 1953
The essence of technology is nothing technological at all
The German philosopher Martin Heidegger gave the lecture Die Frage nach der Technik in Munich in November 1953, and it was printed in 1954. Translated from German.
Philip K. Dick published this story about self-replicating killing robots that learn to imitate humans in Space Science Fiction in May 1953. Major Hendricks speaks the line to Soviet soldiers Klaus and Rudi.
They were alive, from any practical standpoint
Philip K. Dick published this story, "Second Variety", about autonomous battlefield robots called claws in Space Science Fiction in May 1953. The narrator describes the weapons.
Giving a machine the job that was our own responsibility
American science fiction writer Robert Sheckley published this story about self-learning police drones meant to stop murder in Galaxy Science Fiction in February 1953. A manufacturer, Gelsen, speaks the line to his engineer Macintyre.
Machines may replace men's brains
B. V. Bowden of Ferranti Ltd, Manchester, wrote this in the preface to Faster Than Thought, the 1953 symposium on digital computers that he edited and that included a chapter by Alan Turing.
Sir Isaac Pitman & SonsFaster Than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines
May well surpass the wit of man
The Earl of Halsbury, Managing Director of the National Research Development Corporation in Britain, wrote this in his foreword to Faster Than Thought, B. V. Bowden's 1953 symposium on digital computing machines.
Sir Isaac Pitman & SonsFaster Than Thought: A Symposium on Digital Computing Machines (Foreword)
You must already know most of the answer
Robert Sheckley published this story about Answerer, a machine built to answer any valid question about the nature of things, in Science Fiction Stories in 1953. This is the story's closing line.
- 1952
A machine's behaviour may be made as adaptive as we please
W. Ross Ashby, a British psychiatrist and cybernetician at Barnwood House, Gloucester, and builder of the Homeostat, opened his 1952 book Design for a Brain with this aim.
A machine assembled at random to be wholly chaotic
W. Ross Ashby, British cybernetician and psychiatrist, wrote this in the summary and preface of Design for a Brain (1952), on his finding that adaptive systems must be assembled largely at random.
- 1951
We should have to expect the machines to take control
Turing in a 1951 lecture, anticipating machines that outstrip human powers.
- 1950
Alan Turing in the first sentence of his paper "Computing Machinery and Intelligence", Mind, October 1950. He replaced the question with the imitation game and also answered Ada Lovelace's 1843 note as "Lady Lovelace's Objection".
Machines thinking without expecting to be contradicted
Turing was Reader in Mathematics at the University of Manchester. He made this prediction in his October 1950 Mind paper introducing the imitation game, in the section on contrary views on "Can machines think?"
Admit the possibility of a mechanized thinking
Claude Shannon, a mathematician at Bell Telephone Laboratories, wrote this paper on programming a computer to play chess. It was first presented at the National IRE Convention in March 1949 and published in March 1950.
Philosophical MagazineProgramming a Computer for Playing Chess
The machine will not learn by mistakes
Claude Shannon of Bell Telephone Laboratories discusses the limits of his proposed chess-playing program in this paper, dated October 8, 1948 and published in Philosophical Magazine in March 1950.
Philosophical MagazineProgramming a Computer for Playing Chess
- 1949
Composed without any human intervention whatever
George Orwell, British novelist, describing a popular song sung by a prole woman in his novel Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in June 1949. Such songs were produced for the proles by a sub-section of the Music Department.
Composed entirely by mechanical means
George Orwell, British novelist, describing the Ministry of Truth's entertainment for the proles in Nineteen Eighty-Four, published in June 1949.
A machine, therefore, can think
Edmund Berkeley, an American actuary and computing pioneer, wrote this popular 1949 book on the new large calculating machines. The line ends the section "Behavior That Is Thinking" in a chapter that asks whether a machine can think.
They think in ways never open to men before
In the first chapter of his 1949 book Giant Brains, or Machines That Think, Edmund Berkeley describes what the finished mechanical brains of the time could do, citing machines at Harvard, Bell Laboratories and the Moore School.
The dogma of the Ghost in the Machine
Gilbert Ryle, Waynflete Professor of Metaphysical Philosophy at Oxford, naming the Cartesian theory of mind in chapter one, "Descartes' Myth", of The Concept of Mind, published in 1949.
Minds are not bits of clockwork
Gilbert Ryle, Oxford philosopher, summing up the Cartesian view of mind he set out to refute in The Concept of Mind, 1949, in the chapter "Descartes' Myth".
- 1948
Bound to devalue the human brain
Norbert Wiener, mathematician at MIT, in the introduction to Cybernetics (1948), signed Mexico City, November 1947, comparing the first industrial revolution's effect on the human arm with what computing machines would do to mental work.
Information is information, not matter or energy
Norbert Wiener, MIT mathematician, at the end of the chapter on computing machines and the nervous system in Cybernetics (1948), arguing that the mechanical brain does not secrete thought.
- 1947
Unwilling to let their jobs be stolen
Turing was designing the ACE computer at the National Physical Laboratory. In this February 1947 lecture he imagined how mathematicians whose methods became routine might resist being replaced by the machine.
London Mathematical SocietyLecture to the London Mathematical Society on 20 February 1947
A machine that can learn from experience
Alan Turing, then at the National Physical Laboratory, lecturing on the Automatic Computing Engine (ACE) to the London Mathematical Society in February 1947, while discussing instruction tables that could let the ACE play chess.
London Mathematical SocietyLecture to the London Mathematical Society on 20 February 1947
- 1945
Wholly new forms of encyclopedias will appear
Vannevar Bush, director of the US Office of Scientific Research and Development, published this essay in The Atlantic Monthly in July 1945. In it he describes the memex, a mechanised personal library.
- 1943
That activity which we are wont to call mental
Neurophysiologist Warren McCulloch and logician Walter Pitts modelled neurons as logical units in this December 1943 paper in the Bulletin of Mathematical Biophysics. The line comes from its closing section, "Consequences."
Bulletin of Mathematical BiophysicsA Logical Calculus of the Ideas Immanent in Nervous Activity
Applicable to both machines and living organisms
Physiologist Arturo Rosenblueth with mathematician Norbert Wiener and engineer Julian Bigelow, in "Behavior, Purpose and Teleology", a January 1943 paper in Philosophy of Science that became a founding text of cybernetics.
Philosophy of Science, vol. 10, no. 1Behavior, Purpose and Teleology
- 1940
Machinery that gives abundance has left us in want
Charlie Chaplin wrote, directed and starred in The Great Dictator, released in October 1940, his first film with dialogue. This line is from the closing speech his barber character gives in place of the dictator Hynkel, a call for peace.
In truth a hunchbacked dwarf sat inside
Benjamin, a German critic in exile in Paris, wrote these theses in early 1940; the Institut für Sozialforschung first printed them in 1942. The first thesis opens with the chess-playing automaton. Translated from German.
Institut für Sozialforschung (first printed 1942)Über den Begriff der Geschichte
- 1938
A widespread world intelligence conscious of itself
English novelist H. G. Wells in the preface to World Brain, his 1938 collection of lectures and essays proposing a permanent world encyclopaedia, published by Doubleday, Doran.
A mechanical unification of the world
H. G. Wells on how new means of communication had tied the world together, in the preface to his 1938 book World Brain.
- 1936
His state of mind at that moment
Alan Turing, a fellow of King's College Cambridge, wrote this in section 9, "The extent of the computable numbers", of his 1936 paper On Computable Numbers, where a human computer is modelled as a machine.
A single machine which can be used to compute any computable sequence
Alan Turing, a young fellow of King's College Cambridge, introduced the universal computing machine in this paper read to the London Mathematical Society in November 1936, published in its Proceedings.
- 1934
His salary depends upon his not understanding it
Upton Sinclair in "I, Candidate for Governor, and How I Got Licked", his book on his run for Governor of California, excerpted in the Oakland Tribune, December 1934. Daniel Kokotajlo quotes it in 2026 for why OpenAI staff stopped worrying.
The automaton is the last step
American historian and critic Lewis Mumford in the opening chapter of Technics and Civilization, his 1934 history of the machine in Western culture, in the section "Machines, Utilities, and 'The Machine'".
The clock, not the steam-engine, is the key-machine
American historian Lewis Mumford in Technics and Civilization (1934), in the section 'The Monastery and the Clock', arguing that mechanical timekeeping, not steam power, founded the machine age.
Cambridge philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein in notes dictated to his students in 1933 and 1934, discussing the question whether a machine could think. The notes were published in 1958.
- 1932
The modern world has no need of slavery
British philosopher Bertrand Russell argued in this October 1932 Harper's Magazine essay, "In Praise of Idleness," that modern technique could shorten working hours for everyone.
- 1931
The lord of the world becomes the slave of the machine
German historian and philosopher Oswald Spengler in his 1931 essay Der Mensch und die Technik (C. H. Beck, Munich), on the machine turning against its Western creator. Translated from German.
- 1930
His real, his permanent problem
British economist John Maynard Keynes, in his essay Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren on technological unemployment and future leisure, The Nation and Athenaeum, October 1930. Reprinted in Essays in Persuasion, 1931.
The Nation and AthenaeumEconomic Possibilities for our Grandchildren
We are being afflicted with a new disease
Cambridge economist John Maynard Keynes wrote this in his 1930 essay "Economic Possibilities for our Grandchildren", early in the Depression, looking ahead a century at productivity, work and leisure.
The Nation and AthenaeumEconomic Possibilities for our Grandchildren
Man has become a kind of prosthetic God
Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis in Vienna, on tools and machines as extensions of human organs in Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (Civilization and Its Discontents), 1930. Translated from German.
Internationaler Psychoanalytischer VerlagDas Unbehagen in der Kultur
Present-day man does not feel happy in his Godlikeness
Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis in Vienna, closing his passage on technical progress in Das Unbehagen in der Kultur (Civilization and Its Discontents), 1930, after calling man a kind of prosthetic god. Translated from German.
Internationaler Psychoanalytischer VerlagDas Unbehagen in der Kultur
- 1925
The mediator between brain and hands must be the heart
German novelist and screenwriter Thea von Harbou in the foreword of her novel Metropolis, first published in 1925, written alongside Fritz Lang's film about a machine city and its robot double of Maria. Translated from German.
- 1924
The craze for machinery not machinery as such
Indian independence leader Mohandas Gandhi said this in an interview printed in his weekly Young India on 13 November 1924, page 378. He was explaining his views on labour-saving machinery.
- 1922
A world composed of metal machines and human machines
Industrialist Henry Ford, head of Ford Motor Company, describing a common fear about mass production that he goes on to reject, in the introduction of his 1922 memoir written with Samuel Crowther.
Machines are to a mechanic what books are to a writer
Henry Ford recalling his boyhood tinkering with watches and machinery and his apprenticeship in a Detroit machine shop, in his 1922 memoir My Life and Work.
Advance the computations faster than the weather advances
Richardson, a British physicist and meteorologist, wrote this in the preface of his 1922 book proposing weather forecasts made by numerical computation.
Cambridge University PressWeather Prediction by Numerical Process
- 1920
Czech writer Karel Čapek's play R.U.R., published in 1920, introduced the word robot. In the prologue, factory director Harry Domin explains the Robots to Helena Glory. Translated from Czech.
He threw out man and made the Robot
Czech writer Karel Čapek published the play R.U.R. in 1920. Factory director Domin explains to Helena Glory how young Rossum simplified the worker. Translated from Czech.
- 1919
Capable of acting as if possest of their own intelligence
Nikola Tesla in the sixth part of his autobiographical series My Inventions, on remotely controlled automata (telautomata), published in Electrical Experimenter in October 1919.
Electrical ExperimenterMy Inventions VI: The Art of Telautomatics
- 1917
Success is the object and justification of a machine
Bengali poet and Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore in his lectures on nationalism given in Japan and the United States in 1916, published as a book in 1917.
The dead rhythm of wheels and counterwheels
Rabindranath Tagore addressing the people of the West on the Western cult of the machine and the nation state, in lectures published as Nationalism in 1917.
- 1911
In the future the system must be first
American engineer Frederick Winslow Taylor in the introduction to The Principles of Scientific Management (1911), his program for systematising factory work, first prepared for the American Society of Mechanical Engineers.
Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations
Whitehead, a mathematician and philosopher in London, wrote this in his 1911 introductory book on mathematics, in a chapter on why mathematical symbolism matters.
Williams and Norgate (Home University Library)An Introduction to Mathematics
- 1909
The only thing that really lives is the Machine
English novelist E. M. Forster published this short story in the Oxford and Cambridge Review in November 1909. In it, the character Kuno speaks to his mother about a world run by an all-providing Machine.
We created the Machine, to do our will
English novelist E. M. Forster published the short story The Machine Stops in November 1909. Kuno says these words to his mother Vashti after telling her how he climbed out to the surface and saw the hills of Wessex.
A roaring motor car is more beautiful than the Victory of Samothrace
Marinetti, an Italian poet, launched Futurism with this manifesto, printed in Le Figaro on 20 February 1909 and in Italian in Poesia. Translated from Italian.
- 1907
Thinks, Speaks, Acts, and Does Everything but Live
American author L. Frank Baum introduced the clockwork man Tik-Tok in Ozma of Oz in 1907. The line is printed on the card that hangs from the mechanical man, which Dorothy finds locked inside a rock in the Land of Ev.
The forty-foot dynamos as a moral force
American historian Henry Adams, writing of himself in the third person, recalls touring the Paris Exposition of 1900 with Langley of the Smithsonian in the chapter The Dynamo and the Virgin. The book was privately printed in 1907.
- 1900
Inventor Nikola Tesla on his remote-controlled telautomatic boat and the future of warfare, in a long essay for The Century Magazine in June 1900.
The Century Illustrated MagazineThe Problem of Increasing Human Energy
- 1899
Do you really believe that a machine thinks
American journalist and story writer Ambrose Bierce opens his short story Moxon's Master, about an inventor and his chess-playing automaton, first printed in the San Francisco Examiner in April 1899.
A machine thinks about the work that it is doing
In Ambrose Bierce's short story Moxon's Master, first published in the San Francisco Examiner on April 16, 1899, the inventor Moxon gives this reply to the narrator. In the story a chess automaton kills its maker.
- 1891
Man has been, to a certain extent, the slave of machinery
Oscar Wilde, the Irish writer, published this essay, The Soul of Man under Socialism, on individualism and socialism in the Fortnightly Review in February 1891.
On the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends
Oscar Wilde, in his essay "The Soul of Man under Socialism" in the Fortnightly Review, February 1891, argues that machines, not people, should do dull and unpleasant work, and that human slavery is wrong.
- 1886
She is above all imperfections and all servitudes
French writer Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's 1886 novel L'Ève future, which made the word andréide popular; a fictional Edison says this to Lord Ewald about Hadaly, the artificial woman he builds. Translated from French.
- 1884
Each new machine will cause a certain amount of misery
Designer, poet and socialist William Morris in his 1884 lecture Useful Work versus Useless Toil, later printed as a Socialist League pamphlet.
- 1879
Machinery which will by-and-by throw itself fatally out of work
Novelist George Eliot (Mary Ann Evans) in the chapter Shadows of the Coming Race of her last book, a set of essays by a fictional narrator, published May 1879. The narrator spars with his friend Trost, who sees machines as slaves.
William Blackwood and SonsImpressions of Theophrastus Such (Shadows of the Coming Race)
Am I already in the shadow of the Coming Race
Novelist George Eliot in Shadows of the Coming Race, a chapter in which her narrator imagines machines that repair and reproduce themselves and supersede humans, published May 1879.
William Blackwood and SonsImpressions of Theophrastus Such (Shadows of the Coming Race)
- 1874
The man is a mere insensible machine
The biologist T. H. Huxley gave this address to the British Association in Belfast in August 1874, discussing Descartes and whether animals and people act as automata.
- 1872
The ultimate development of mechanical consciousness
English novelist Samuel Butler published the satire Erewhon in 1872; this line is from its chapters The Book of the Machines, a fictional Erewhonian treatise that the narrator translates.
- 1870
Ralph Waldo Emerson, the American essayist, wrote about tools and machines in the essay Works and Days, published in Society and Solitude in 1870.
- 1869
What is freedom but machinery?
English poet, critic and school inspector. From the chapter Sweetness and Light in Culture and Anarchy, 1869, where he lists freedom, population, coal and railroads as means mistaken for ends.
- 1867
The instrument of labour becomes a competitor of the workman
Karl Marx, the German philosopher and economist, analysed the conflict between workers and machines in volume one of Das Kapital, chapter 13, section 5, published in Hamburg in 1867. Translated from German.
Otto MeissnerDas Kapital, Band I, Kapitel 13: Maschinerie und große Industrie
- 1864
It will necessarily guide the future course of the science
Charles Babbage, writing about his unbuilt Analytical Engine in the chapter devoted to it in his 1864 memoir Passages from the Life of a Philosopher.
Longman, Green, Longman, Roberts, & GreenPassages from the Life of a Philosopher
- 1863
The machines are gaining ground upon us
Samuel Butler, then an English sheep farmer in New Zealand, sent this letter titled "Darwin among the Machines" and signed Cellarius to the Christchurch Press in June 1863. It was reprinted in his Note-Books in 1917.
War to the death should be instantly proclaimed against them
Samuel Butler, writing as Cellarius from New Zealand, ends his June 1863 letter "Darwin among the Machines" to the Christchurch Press by calling for the destruction of machines.
- 1858
Organs of the human brain, created by the human hand
Karl Marx, German philosopher and economist living in London. Written in notebook VII of the Grundrisse manuscripts, 1857 to 1858, in the passage on machinery and fixed capital; first published 1939. Translated from German.
Marx-Engels-Werke vol. 42, Dietz VerlagGrundrisse der Kritik der politischen Ökonomie
- 1855
The creator was killed by the creature
Herman Melville published this story in Putnam's Monthly in August 1855; it is about the architect Bannadonna, who is killed by the mechanical bell-ringer he built for a cathedral belfry.
Putnam's Monthly MagazineThe Bell-Tower (in The Piazza Tales)
- 1854
Men have become the tools of their tools
American writer Henry David Thoreau, in the chapter Economy of Walden, published in August 1854 after his stay at Walden Pond.
We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us
Henry David Thoreau, the American writer, wrote this in the chapter Where I Lived, and What I Lived For in Walden, published in August 1854.
Operations of the mind by which reasoning is performed
George Boole, professor of mathematics at Queen's College Cork, opens his 1854 book An Investigation of the Laws of Thought, which set out an algebra of logic.
- 1848
Lightened the day’s toil of any human being
The English philosopher and economist John Stuart Mill wrote this in the chapter on the stationary state (Book IV, Chapter VI) of his Principles of Political Economy, first published in 1848.
John W. ParkerPrinciples of Political Economy, Book IV, Chapter VI: Of the Stationary State
- 1843
Ada Lovelace, Countess of Lovelace, wrote this in Note A of her notes on her translation of Menabrea's paper on Babbage's engine, August 1843.
Taylor's Scientific MemoirsSketch of the Analytical Engine, with Notes by the Translator (Note A)
The Analytical Engine has no pretensions whatever to originate any thing
Ada Lovelace in Note G of her 1843 translation of Menabrea's paper on Babbage's Analytical Engine, spelled as printed then. Turing answered her in 1950 as "Lady Lovelace's Objection".
Scientific Memoirs, vol. 3Sketch of the Analytical Engine, Notes by the Translator, Note G
- 1842
The machine is not a thinking being
Menabrea, a Piedmontese military engineer, wrote this account of Babbage's Analytical Engine in French in 1842 after Babbage presented it in Turin. English from Ada Lovelace’s 1843 translation. Translated from French.
Bibliothèque universelle de GenèveNotions sur la machine analytique de M. Charles Babbage
Menabrea, a Piedmontese military engineer, described the uses of Babbage's Analytical Engine in this 1842 French memoir in the Bibliothèque universelle de Genève. English from Ada Lovelace’s 1843 translation. Translated from French.
Bibliothèque universelle de GenèveNotions sur la machine analytique de M. Charles Babbage
- 1836
Regulated by mind, and by nothing else
Edgar Allan Poe, then an editor at the Southern Literary Messenger, argued in April 1836 that the touring chess automaton exhibited by Maelzel hid a human player.
- 1835
To discharge the greater part of the men spinners
Andrew Ure, Glasgow chemist, professor at the University of Glasgow and supporter of the factory system, on the automatic spinning mule in his 1835 book The Philosophy of Manufactures, published in London by Charles Knight.
- 1829
Scottish essayist Thomas Carlyle published this essay anonymously in the Edinburgh Review in June 1829, calling his era the Mechanical Age.
Men are grown mechanical in head and in heart
Thomas Carlyle, Scottish essayist, in his June 1829 Edinburgh Review essay "Signs of the Times" on how machinery was reshaping society and thought.
- 1821
The substitution of machinery for human labour
Ricardo, the British political economist, added a new chapter On Machinery to the third edition of his Principles in 1821, changing his earlier view on how machines affect workers.
The employment of machinery is frequently detrimental to their interests
David Ricardo, the British political economist, wrote in his 1821 chapter On Machinery, in the third edition of On the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, that workers' fears about machines had some basis.
- 1818
You are my creator, but I am your master
In Mary Shelley's novel, published in London in January 1818, the creature says this to Victor Frankenstein after he destroys the female companion he had begun to build.
Lackington, Hughes, Harding, Mavor & JonesFrankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus
- 1816
You lifeless, damned automaton
Prussian jurist and Romantic author. In his tale Der Sandmann, published in the collection Nachtstücke in 1816, Nathanael hurls this at his fiancée Clara, foreshadowing his love for the automaton Olimpia. Translated from German.
- 1812
Conceived themselves to be sacrificed to improvements in mechanism
George Gordon, Lord Byron, gave his maiden speech in the House of Lords in February 1812, opposing the bill that made breaking stocking frames a capital crime during the Luddite unrest in Nottinghamshire.
Hansard, UK ParliamentFrame Work Bill (House of Lords debate)