Judgments come with responsibilities, and responsibility lies with humans
12 August 2023 (Rolling Stone). Joy Buolamwini, AI researcher, on facial recognition and accountability, quoted in Rolling Stone, 2023.
FAQ
What is this?
A wall of what the world says about artificial intelligence. Predictions, warnings, ad slogans, politicians’ phrases, research jargon, single words. No commentary, no ranking. The only editorial act is putting them next to each other.
Who says these things?
CEOs, researchers, heads of state, senators, philosophers, essayists, anonymous engineers, marketing departments, and the models themselves. Every quote in the archive links to its source, and wherever it can be found, that is the original: the speaker’s own post or essay, the interview, the transcript, the outlet that first reported it. Never a copy of a copy. Quotes are verbatim, shortened only by cutting at the edges, never rewritten.
How are quotes chosen?
Two sets. The Curated set is chosen by hand and meant to hold for years, though it does change: the classics, the slogans, the vocabulary.
The Daily set is distilled once a day from about 130 sources: media, company blogs, newsletters, philosophy magazines and research institutes, plus news searches for the people and topics that shape the field, from lab CEOs and heads of state to the philosophers asking what any of this means (the full list), by a language model working under fixed rules, then checked in code: length, no names on the wall, no duplicates, and for quotes the exact wording must appear in the source.
There is no daily quota: a quiet day adds nothing, a loud one adds a dozen. Daily quotes leave the wall after 30 days and stay in the archive.
Is this written by AI?
Partly. The daily quotes are proposed by a model and filtered by code; a human reads the digest every day and can remove anything. The Curated set and everything on this page is written by people. Which is to say: the wall is about AI, made with AI, and the arguments on it are not the machine’s.
Why are there no names on the wall?
Because on the wall the sentences should meet as equals. A slogan next to a warning next to a law. Who said what matters, and the archive tells you, one click away. On the wall it would only tell you whom to agree with.
What is the Time Machine?
On the first of every month, the previous month is frozen as a snapshot: the Curated set as it stood plus every daily quote of that month. The Time Machine lets you run the wall for any month or year back to November 2022, when ChatGPT launched. The months before September 2026 were filled in afterwards from the sources of the time, with the same rules as the daily update. It is the closest thing to a mood diary of the AI debate.
When does it update?
Once a day at noon Berlin time. The ring around the date fills over 24 hours; click it for the countdown. In the archive, new quotes carry a green dot on their Daily badge for a day.
Can I use a quote?
The quotes belong to whoever said them; short quotes with attribution are fine under quotation rules. The wallpaper download and the embed code are for personal use. For anything else, write.
Who else is watching right now?
The note at the bottom of the wall counts everyone who has the wall open at this moment, one per device, refreshed every 15 seconds. No names, no accounts, nothing stored (see Privacy). Click or tap the smiley next to it and one small smiley per person jumps out. Throw them around, stack them on the quote and watch them fall when it changes.
Alone on the wall? Try it with 60 people. That is a demo with a made-up number; the real count is not affected.
Play DemoWho runs this?
Büro Bloock, a design studio in Cologne. AI Zeitgeist is an independent project, not funded by anyone on the wall. Errors, missing sources, a quote that should not be here: hello@aizeitgeist.tv.
Is there an Easter egg?
Yes. We won’t say where, that would spoil it. It is off the record, it takes a little persistence, and so far it has mostly been found by people who click things they probably shouldn’t. If you find it, keep it to yourself. Or don’t: everything on this wall ends up quoted eventually.
Privacy
No ads, no profiles. Fonts are served from this site and your settings live in your browser. Likes are counted anonymously: one number per quote, nothing about you. We use Google Analytics to see which quotes travel, but only if you allow it in the small note at the bottom. You can change that choice any time. See the privacy notice and imprint.
The people on the wall
The builders 29Founders, CEOs, the people who run the labs
Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Jensen Huang, Elon Musk, Meredith Whittaker, Mustafa Suleyman and 23 more
The researchers 50Scientists, professors, the people who publish
Gary Marcus, Yann LeCun, Geoffrey Hinton, Jaron Lanier, Stuart Russell, Timnit Gebru and 44 more
The politicians 12Heads of state, ministers, lawmakers, regulators
Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Bernie Sanders, Dario Liguti, David Sacks, Jay Jones and 6 more
The writers 12Journalists, authors, critics, newsletter voices
Nathan Lambert, Zvi Mowshowitz, Fritz Espenlaub, Cory Doctorow, Kevin Roose, Ted Chiang and 6 more
The investors 7Venture capital, analysts, those who price it
Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, Beth Ann Bovino, Dan Simkowitz, Francisco Jeronimo, Matt Murphy and 1 more
The thinkers 24Philosophers, theologians, ethicists, historians
Pope Leo XIV, Yuval Noah Harari, Nick Bostrom, Alena Buyx, Noam Chomsky, Pope Francis and 18 more
The makers 5Artists, musicians, filmmakers, actors, designers
Giacomo Miceli, Michel Gondry, Natasha Lyonne, Sean Ono Lennon, Zelda Williams
More voices 5Everyone else with more than one quote
Caleb Flynn, Dr Sean Stevens, Dr. Edward Simons, Jean Shields Fleming, Oliver Feeley-Sprague
- All 144 Speakers
The topicsWhat they talk about
The yearsWhen they said it
Awards for the wall
Archive
Most QuotedAll SpeakersTopicsYears
Think big
The wall works wherever a big screen meets people. Swap the content, the display and the audience: a gallery, an off-space, a pop-up store, a museum, a lobby, a shop window. Indoors or outside.
The words can come from anywhere: written by hand, aggregated live from news, social streams like Instagram or TikTok, or your own feeds. And the people in front of it join the wall, each one a digital avatar or a name, checked in with a QR code at the door or counted by a camera in the room.
