No one wants to go to an AI restaurant and eat an AI cheeseburger
22 October 2026 (STAT). Roivant CEO Matt Gline, at the STAT Summit in 2026, mocking the idea that AI will transform every part of life, in response to Dario Amodei's predictions.
FAQ
What is this?
A wall of what the world says about artificial intelligence, updated daily. Predictions, warnings, ad slogans, politicians’ phrases, research jargon, single words. No commentary, no ranking, no framing. The only editorial act is putting them next to each other. Make up your own mind.
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.
What is special about AI Zeitgeist?
Every quote is verbatim unless marked as a paraphrase, dated and linked to where it was said, from Ada Lovelace in 1843 to this morning’s news, and the wall adds no commentary and no ranking. Each quote carries a line of context and a tab “Who else?” with other voices on the same point; you decide who agrees and who pushes back.
From any quote, the speaker, the topic and the year are one click away, and every speaker page shows where others mention that person. The Time Machine replays any month since November 2022, and the whole set is open data under CC BY 4.0.
How are quotes chosen?
Two ways in. Some quotes are chosen by hand and meant to hold for years, though the selection does change: the classics, the slogans, the vocabulary, and a few lines we wrote ourselves, always marked as ours.
Most arrive with the news: they are distilled once a day from about 150 sources: media, company blogs, newsletters, philosophy magazines and research institutes, plus news searches for the people and topics that shape the field, from lab CEOs and heads of state to the philosophers asking what any of this means (the full list), by a language model working under fixed rules, then checked in code: length, no names on the wall, no duplicates, and for quotes the exact wording must appear in the source. A person reads every proposal before it goes live at noon and can remove it. Every quote is then checked a second time against its source: the exact words, the speaker, the date. What can't be confirmed doesn't go up. No voice gets more than one line a day, no outlet more than three, and no single stance can crowd out the others. Quotes from before the daily update began were added later the same way, from the news of their day, and approved one by one.
There is no daily quota: a quiet day adds nothing, a loud one adds a dozen. News quotes leave the wall after 30 days and stay in the archive. When no one in particular said a line, it says what it is instead of a name: a company’s slogan, a document, a term, words an AI produced, a line of our own.
Is this written by AI?
Partly. The daily quotes are proposed by a model and filtered by code; a person reads every proposal before it goes live and can remove it. The hand-picked quotes, our own lines and everything on this page are 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 hand-picked quotes as they stood plus every news 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 before their date for a day.
Can I get new quotes by mail?
Yes. The Daily by mail brings every new quote of the day in one mail, right after the noon update, with speaker, context and source. It is free, and every mail has a link to unsubscribe.
Can I use a quote?
The quotes belong to whoever said them; short quotes with attribution are fine under quotation rules. The wallpaper download and the embed code are for personal use. For anything else, write.
Who else is watching right now?
The note at the bottom of the wall counts everyone who has the wall open at this moment, one per device, refreshed every 15 seconds. No names, no accounts, nothing stored (see Privacy). Click or tap the smiley next to it and one small smiley per person jumps out. Throw them around, stack them on the quote and watch them fall when it changes.
Alone on the wall? Try it with 60 people. That is a demo with a made-up number; the real count is not affected.
Play DemoWhat happens when I like a quote?
The Like button in the quote view and in the archive saves the quote in your browser, nowhere else. The 3 button at the top of the wall then shows only your liked quotes on the wall. Clear your browser data and your likes are gone.
Each like also adds one to a public count per quote. It is anonymous: no account, no name, no IP address stored. While you have the wall open and someone else likes a quote, a short note at the top tells you which one and links to it:
Who runs this?
Büro Bloock, a design studio in Cologne. AI Zeitgeist is an independent project, not funded by anyone on the wall. Errors, missing sources, a quote that should not be here: hello@aizeitgeist.tv.
Is there press material?
Yes. The press page has a short profile in English and German, key facts, the launch video, logos as SVG, EPS and PNG, and 20 screenshots of the wall, the Time Machine, the speaker, topic and year pages and the mobile view, all in one ZIP. The compilation is open data under CC BY 4.0; the quotes stay with their authors.
Is there an Easter egg?
Yes. We won’t say where, that would spoil it. It is off the record, it takes a little persistence, and so far it has mostly been found by people who click things they probably shouldn’t. If you find it, keep it to yourself. Or don’t: everything on this wall ends up quoted eventually.
Privacy
No ads, no profiles. Fonts are served from this site and your settings live in your browser. Likes are counted anonymously: one number per quote, nothing about you. We use Google Analytics to see which quotes travel, but only if you allow it in the small note at the bottom. You can change that choice any time. See the privacy notice and imprint.
Most QuotedAll SpeakersTopicsYears
The people on the wall
The builders 29Founders, CEOs, the people who run the labs
Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, Elon Musk, Jensen Huang, Meredith Whittaker, Mark Zuckerberg and 23 more
The researchers 49Scientists, professors, the people who publish
Gary Marcus, Yann LeCun, Geoffrey Hinton, Jaron Lanier, Stuart Russell, Timnit Gebru and 43 more
The politicians 11Heads of state, ministers, lawmakers, regulators
Donald Trump, Vladimir Putin, Bernie Sanders, David Sacks, Jay Jones, JD Vance and 5 more
The writers 11Journalists, authors, critics, newsletter voices
Nathan Lambert, Fritz Espenlaub, Zvi Mowshowitz, Cory Doctorow, Kevin Roose, Ted Chiang and 5 more
The investors 7Venture capital, analysts, those who price it
Marc Andreessen, Peter Thiel, Beth Ann Bovino, Dan Simkowitz, Francisco Jeronimo, Matt Murphy and 1 more
The thinkers 24Philosophers, theologians, ethicists, historians
Pope Leo XIV, Yuval Noah Harari, Nick Bostrom, Pope Francis, Shannon Vallor, Alena Buyx and 18 more
The makers 5Artists, musicians, filmmakers, actors, designers
Giacomo Miceli, Michel Gondry, Natasha Lyonne, Sean Ono Lennon, Zelda Williams
Everyone Else 19Without a listed role
Al Tompkins, Burak Oktenli, Caleb Flynn, Chamath Palihapitiya, Dario Perkins, David Krueger and 13 more
- All 155 Speakers
The topicsWhat they talk about
The yearsWhen they said it
Think big
The wall works wherever a big screen meets people. Swap the content, the display and the audience: a gallery, an off-space, a pop-up store, a museum, a lobby, a shop window. Indoors or outside.
The words can come from anywhere: written by hand, aggregated live from news, social streams like Instagram or TikTok, or your own feeds. And the people in front of it join the wall, each one a digital avatar or a name, checked in with a QR code at the door or counted by a camera in the room.
