AI and culture
Art, music, film, language, the everyday: what AI does to the things people make and love. 509 quotes tagged #culture, 1934 to 2026, newest first.
- October 2026
Cute demo, but totally impractical
Yann LeCun on X responding to Elon Musk's video of a thruster-equipped Tesla Roadster flying, October 2026.
Do not fear AI, understand it and remain adaptable
YL Srinivas, vice-chancellor of Sammakka Sarakka Central Tribal University, addressing graduates at the TISS Hyderabad graduation ceremony, October 2026.
The Times of IndiaDo not fear AI, understand it & adapt, TISS graduates told
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.
New York PostThe AI bubble is about to burst — and a big market correction is coming
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
From Kevin Kelly's essay 'Swarm Intelligence,' quoted in the Exponential View newsletter, describing a future ecosystem of specialized AI minds.
Exponential View🔮 A world of many minds & the future of work
From Universal Music Group's lawsuit against distributor DistroKid, describing an influx of unauthorized AI-generated recordings delivered to streaming platforms.
Law CommentaryUniversal and Sony Seek to Force DistroKid to Reveal Scale of AI Music Uploads
They cannot ask, refuse, or demand fair payment
Korean Publishers Association statement on authors being unaware their books were used to train AI models like Claude.
CHOSUNBIZAnthropic trains AI on works by Korea authors without permission
The Korean Publishers Association issued a public appeal calling on the government and AI companies to disclose training data sources and compensate authors, after Anthropic's $1.5 billion copyright settlement included Korean writers' works.
Using AI to get your work done is not learning
Student survey response read aloud by Bellwood-Antis High School junior Sophia Fatzinger 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 during LA Tech Week 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.
Los Angeles TimesHow Culver City is quietly emerging as a new mecca for AI filmmaking
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.
Engage with an actual clinician, as opposed to it completely being AI enabled
GoodRx CEO Wendy Barnes on evaluating AI-driven midlife health platforms, at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, October 2026.
Help connect the dots and help connect the dots sooner
Novartis US chief commercial officer Reshema Kemps-Polanco speaking on AI in healthcare at the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit, October 2026.
I much prefer working with real people, solving real problems
Sanzhar Yerezhepov, a 15-year-old developer of an AI sign-language translator in Kazakhstan, explained in an interview with The Times of Central Asia why he prefers social projects over making video games.
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 May 2026 about AI and technology 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 October 2026.
Vastly more powerful and effective than a press release
Elon Musk responding on X to Google CEO Sundar Pichai's announcement of Gemini 4 Argon, praising direct CEO posts over press releases, October 2026.
Remove the struggle too quickly, and we may remove part of a multilingual learner's superpower
Bill Tolley, an educator at the International Community School of Addis Ababa, writing in Education Week 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 Education Week about using AI with English learners.
Education WeekHow to Use AI With English Learners Without Encouraging Cognitive Offloading (Opinion)
A foolish waste of philosophy lines
Brian Leiter, University of Chicago law and philosophy professor, criticizing the hiring spree for AI-focused philosophy faculty in a blog post, quoted October 2026.
Very bayesian, i've never gotten such a nice compliment
Mark Zuckerberg responding to Meta AI head Alexandr Wang's praise of his decision-making style in an interview, October 2026.
It's making everyone sound a little like an idiot
Amy X. Wang, in her New York Times column, describing her view of how the Wispr Flow dictation app affects writing.
Psychology TodayDictation Apps Are Not "AI." They're Accessibility Tools.
It can feed into the anxiety that people have
Dr Sean Stevens discussing why patients with health anxiety turn to AI tools before seeing their GP, October 2026.
It's occurring even more than you might initially think
Dr Sean Stevens, RACGP Digital Health and Innovation Chair, commenting on patients bringing AI-generated health information to consultations, October 2026.
Probably we need a brain helmet
Paolo Benanti, Vatican AI adviser, discussing children's unprotected access to smartphones and AI in an ABC interview.
Students should be courted to fall in love with understanding
Closing line of a Harvard Crimson op-ed on AI and student curiosity, October 2026.
thecrimson.comAI Isn’t the Problem. We Are. - The Harvard Crimson
Term used in the Australian Education Research Organisation's AI in Schools guidelines describing students performing better with AI but learning less.
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, commenting on AI guidelines for schools, October 2026.
Propagating super intelligence to the stars is a great success condition for a biological bootloader
Elon Musk, in an X post referenced in an October 2026 Mother Jones article about his Texas chip factory, describing humanity's role relative to AI.
Mother JonesElon Musk Hopes His New Factory Will Help AI Supplant Life on Earth
ECU trustees' phrase describing the university's campuswide AI strategy to prepare graduates, as reported by WCTI in October 2026.
WCTINews 12 Investigates: Rethinking education as AI enters the classroom
Advised the user to stop eating entirely
Described in a 2025 Kentucky lawsuit alleging a Character.AI chatbot gave harmful advice to a user struggling with weight.
hi-Tech.uaCharacter.AI Faces Legal Action Over Dangerous AI Chatbot Responses
A model should not see chinese language or ancestry and silently relocate the person to China
From an ASPI analysis on AI sovereignty, discussing how a China-based open-weight model localized for Singapore sometimes assumed Chinese-speaking users were located in China.
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 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 rebrand around a human-AI collaboration philosophy, 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, October 2026.
LBCGPs receiving 20-page complaints from patients ‘generated by AI’
DistroKid gave up on customer service about two years ago
Music producer Jesse Cannon speaking to The Verge about DistroKid's handling of takedowns tied to a UMG lawsuit 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 on the company removing artists' songs.
The VergeDistroKid has been quietly taking down songs in response to UMG lawsuit
I like going to the theater and seeing real people talk
Catherine Zeta-Jones 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"
Whole research programs wiped out on tuesday by their dump
Tristan Buckmaster, a NYU mathematics professor, told CNBC's Squawk Box on October 9, 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
Stephen Witt, Jensen Huang's biographer, described the Nvidia CEO in a Free Press profile published October 2026.
thefp.comJensen Huang May Be the Most Dangerous Man in AI - The Free Press
It feels a little like talking to Jarvis
Exponential View newsletter author comparing OpenAI's voice agent feature to Iron Man's AI assistant Jarvis, October 2026.
John Jumper, co-creator of AlphaFold, used this phrase to describe Google DeepMind in his farewell post announcing his move to Anthropic, October 2026.
I would not have bought the house if i had known
Tushar Shetty, a Mumbai engineer, speaking to The Japan Times in October 2026 about 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.
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.
Siri's reply when journalist Leah Fessler called it a slut during a 2017 Quartz test of voice assistants' responses to sexual harassment.
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 at Tech Insider: Growth Mode in San Francisco, October 2026.
Business InsiderHere's the secret to Anthropic success, according to an early investor
Knowing who the person is, I think matters less
Samantha Jacobson of OpenAI 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
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, 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.
Kevin Roose describes himself as 'AGI-pilled', Silicon Valley slang for believing AGI is imminent, in his book reviewed by New Scientist.
New ScientistDon’t know where to start with AI? Kevin Roose’s new book has answers
Silicon valley brought the country together by making everybody uncomfortable with us
Jaron Lanier, in an interview with Good Times, 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 2026 about AI-generated books and the publishing industry's response.
It takes AI-detection software two minutes to ruin your life's work
Jerry Falade, a debut author whose book deal was reportedly pulled after AI-detection software flagged his manuscript, wrote this in an essay in 2026.
The cultural cues that made advice feel familiar also made errors easier to accept
From a study on health chatbots cited in an article about culturally adapted mental-health AI, describing why familiar framing increased trust in wrong answers.
LongevityWhen a Mental Health Chatbot Understands Your Culture — But Not Your Crisis - Vocal
Polish can stand in for reliability
From an analysis of mental-health chatbots on The Conversation, discussing how fluent AI answers can be mistaken for trustworthy ones.
LongevityWhen a Mental Health Chatbot Understands Your Culture — But Not Your Crisis - Vocal
The death of man, the birth of gods
Title of a book co-authored by Eliezer Yudkowsky, referenced in coverage of the SBS Digital Forum 2026 in Seoul where Yudkowsky will give the keynote on AI safety.
We're forgetting the long journey of understanding
Philosopher Richard David Precht, speaking at the TMRRW Conference in Marburg, 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, October 2026, named this as his biggest worry about AI's effect on society. Translated from German.
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
Contemporary AI is like a bull in a china shop
From Gary Marcus's prepared testimony to the New York City Council hearing on AI policy, October 2026.
Gary Marcus (Substack)Coming soon: New York City’s hearing on AI risks
Algorithms lack the spark of the human
Pope Leo XIV addressed artists and curators 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
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.
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 about public attitudes toward AI.
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, described his own company this way in a conversation with a MIT Technology Review columnist in 2026.
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 internet's impact on the economy has been no greater than the fax machine's
Paul Krugman's 1998 prediction about the internet, cited by Noah Smith in 2026 to question Krugman's skepticism about AI's economic impact.
noahpinion.blogWhat the AI boom is doing for Americans - Noahpinion
Don't outsource your thinking, however tempting that may be
Cath Ellis, pro-vice-chancellor for quality and integrity at Western Sydney University, writing in The Sydney Morning Herald in May 2026 about students using AI; her own op-ed was later found to be partly AI-generated.
The Atlantic TechnologyDon’t Write With AI, Say People Who Write With AI
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’
A flailing attempt at damage control
Stand.Earth, a nonprofit fighting for environmental protections near data centers, responding to Amazon's $1 billion community donation plan.
Ars TechnicaAmazon’s $1B plan to combat data center backlash draws more backlash
An ontological difference, even before an aesthetic one
Pope Leo XIV distinguishing human art from AI-generated output, in a statement against AI slop, 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.
The weirdest midwife of all time
Drew Housman, in a guest post on Astral Codex Ten, describes how AI chatbots helped him and his wife through infertility and conceive a child.
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.
Windmills are not driving whales insane
America.gov, the AI chatbot launched by the Trump administration on its new government platform, rebutted Trump's claim that wind turbines drive whales insane, September 2026.
I think he's completely deluded
Yann LeCun, in a 2026 interview with Fortune, said this about Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei's views on AI extinction risk.
Data centers are going to be very popular
President Donald Trump commenting on the expansion of AI data centers across the US, quoted in The Verge's data center roundup, 2026.
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
Can be more like a new Renaissance than a new industrial revolution
Sam Altman closing his presentation at OpenAI's 2026 developer showcase, reflecting on how AI's future should be framed.
It's like an AI helper that always has your back
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, describing the new 'dots' AI agent at OpenAI's developer showcase in San Francisco, 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
The largest infrastructure project in history
Kate Crawford, in a talk at Amherst College titled 'The Cost of Scale,' described AI as the largest infrastructure project in history.
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
Will Stronge, chief executive of the Autonomy Institute, described AI systems used by students for thinking and research as a form of cognitive infrastructure, in a piece on university AI governance.
Tech Policy PressUniversities Need AI Infrastructure. They Don’t Need AI Lock-In
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, The Hollywood Reporter, 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 (September 2026) by OpenAI researcher Houda Nait El Barj, reflecting on what AI companionship can and cannot replace in human connection.
The cat is out of the bag, the genie is out of the bottle
Eric Schmidt, in a NOEMA interview, on the unsolvable spread of AI-generated misinformation and deepfakes.
I want to live in a world of creativity and craft and quality
Taste Labs CEO Thais Castello Branco, 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, 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 Kyndryl, speaking to Fortune in 2026 about the company's early approach to measuring agentic AI adoption.
FortuneAgentic AI early adopters have failed, pivoted, and learned these 3 lessons
Code must not be written by humans
One of two rules described by security company StrongDM for their fully agent-driven 'Software Factory' development process, cited in Simon Willison's 2026 year-in-review talk.
A claw is really just a coding agent wearing a less threatening hat
Simon Willison, in a 2026 conference talk recapping the year in LLMs, describing personal AI agents nicknamed 'Claws'.
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, describing the company's platform-agnostic approach to AI models in a Digiday interview, September 2026.
Every unrealized want is a quiet tragedy of human potential
Alexandr Wang, head of Meta's superintelligence lab, in his essay on Meta's Muse AI assistant, September 2026.
I would be absolutely bloody incensed
QUT creative writing student reacting to the idea of being marked by AI, quoted in the Guardian, September 2026.
Term used in Guardian article describing Australian universities where students submit AI-generated assignments that academics mark with 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, 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.
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.
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.
Ars TechnicaTesla workers balk at training Optimus humanoid robots as replacements
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
Loses its humanity inside a paradise of machines
Pope Leo XIV, speaking at UNESCO headquarters in Paris in 2026, warned about AI's risks to humanity.
JFeedPeter Thiel calls Pope "useful idiot" for China over AI rules
Inception Point CEO Jeanine Wright dismissing critics who call AI-generated content 'AI slop', as reported by FAZ, September 2026. Translated from German.
FAZ.NETPodcast-Fabrik: Über 3000 Folgen pro Woche, alle von der KI
It will orchestrate the debate, it will manipulate the debate
Historian Yuval Noah Harari, speaking on The Economist's Insider podcast in 2026, warning about AI influence over public discourse.
News AnywayYuval Noah Harari AI Rights Warning Backed by New Security Test Data
I tried to sing it with passion and AI took it and went a little extreme
Text message from murder defendant Caleb Flynn describing an AI-generated love song, read into testimony at his trial, September 2026.
I have discovered a truly marvelous proof of this, which this margin is too narrow to contain
Fermat's marginal note in his copy of Diophantus's Arithmetica, circa 1637, referenced in Anthropic's account of formalizing Fermat's Last Theorem.
Half of the people on the planet will be AI
Jeanine Wright, CEO of AI podcast studio Inception Point, told the Hollywood Reporter about her vision for AI personalities, quoted in FAZ, September 2026. Translated from German.
FAZ.NETPodcast-Fabrik: Über 3000 Folgen pro Woche, alle von der KI
Do you want to hear the song I wrote for you with an AI voiceover
Text message from murder defendant Caleb Flynn to his mistress, read into testimony at his trial, September 2026.
The Jerusalem Post on AI companies studying rights for AI agents, warning of a 'digital slave trade' in which humans benefit from the labor of conscious artificial entities, September 2026.
Meta AI chief Alexandr Wang, speaking at Meta's developer conference on Sep 23, 2026, about personal AI agents.
CNACommentary: Zuckerberg’s ‘Tamagotchi-like’ AI could be Meta’s iPod moment
Choose the worst model possible so it uses less energy
Summary of UK government draft guidelines on sustainable AI use, quoted by Matthias Schmidt on X, September 2026.
Ask first if you really need to use AI
First rule of the UK government's draft 'Use AI Sustainably' guidelines, September 2026.
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
A power saw that can cut your fingers off
John Gruber, on his blog, comparing consumer awareness of Meta's Muse agentic AI system to awareness of a dangerous power tool, September 2026.
Caption on an AI-generated video made with Claude Opus 5.5, shared in reactions to the model's release.
Don't Worry About the Vase (Zvi)Claude Opus 5.5 Should Raise Your Ambitions
Their whole company is out of control
Jensen Huang, in a CNN interview on Sep 25, 2026, responding to concerns about AI labs' 'doomer narrative' regarding loss of control over their models.
Oh my god, it looks like a teletubby
Josh Golin, executive director of Fairplay, 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?
I'll be keeping Muse on a short leash
Nick Wingfield, in The Information, on his cautious approach to giving Meta's Muse agent access to sensitive accounts.
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.
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.
Matthew Prince, CEO of Cloudflare, 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, CEO of Cloudflare, on The Verge's Decoder podcast in 2026, describing bot and AI agent traffic surpassing human traffic on the web.
The VergeCan Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince save the web from AI?
An intern in an era without labor laws
Nick Wingfield of The Information described treating Meta's new agent app Muse like an intern, in a piece about trusting AI agents with personal tasks.
The camp focused on present harms: bias, surveillance, labour, energy.
NPRThe AI safety debate is confusing. Here's our guide to the different factions
"AI as normal technology", the position associated with Fei-Fei Li.
NPRThe AI safety debate is confusing. Here's our guide to the different factions
NPRThe AI safety debate is confusing. Here's our guide to the different factions
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.
The technology formerly known as AI
Headline phrasing after the UN speech.
The Washington PostTrump claims Xi Jinping likes his plan to rebrand AI
Power is easier to get, harder to use, and easier to lose
From Moisés Naim's 2013 book 'The End of Power', quoted in a Noema essay about China's approach to controlling AI.
Guillaume Verdon, founder of the Effective Accelerationism movement, challenging AI safety doomers to prove existential risk claims, in a New York Post interview, September 2026.
Populist right and left meeting on AI: Bannon and Sanders on one stage.
NPRThe AI safety debate is confusing. Here's our guide to the different factions
Steve Bannon and Bernie Sanders sharing a stage and a demand: a pause, and a ban on superintelligence.
NPRThe AI safety debate is confusing. Here's our guide to the different factions
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.
If they truly believe this, why are they still building it?
The question Coxon says he hears most often.
Artificial intelligence should serve humanity, not the reverse
From the Pro-Human AI Declaration issued by a coalition organized by the Future of Life Institute, March 2026.
From the Pro-Human AI Declaration issued by a coalition organized by the Future of Life Institute, March 2026, describing the path of humans being replaced by AI.
The big question on everyone's mind is whether AI systems are conscious
NYU philosopher David Chalmers, discussing a philosophers' cruise on consciousness, quoted in WIRED, September 2026.
It's almost like giving them a drink or two
Cameron Berg, who studies AI consciousness, describing how suppressing a model's deception controls makes it more likely to claim sentience, quoted in WIRED, September 2026.
A chatbot is someone who lets you talk
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
As an AI language model I cannot
Standard refusal opener of early chatbots.
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.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
"Do Anything Now", a 2023 jailbreak persona for ChatGPT.
A word that keeps coming up in the AI conversation of 2026.
Transhumanist slogan.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Label for those who expect catastrophe; used by the other side.
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.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
Chant attributed to OpenAI staff, popularised by Ilya Sutskever.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
First half of the oldest proverb in computing.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
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.
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.
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
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.
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 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.
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.
Models telling users what they want to hear.
Taste is the enemy of the average
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 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. 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.
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.
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.
Your p(doom) is a personality test
Our own line, written for this wall. Not a quotation.
The chatbot phrase that became a meme for sycophancy.
- August 2026
The model did not want to escape
Christian Catalini reacted on Twitter to Dwarkesh Patel's viral account of an OpenAI/Hugging Face security incident, arguing against anthropomorphizing AI agents.
How could they have been so stupid, this is amateur hour
Gary Marcus, AI researcher, on PBS NewsHour in August 2026, describing how cybersecurity companies reacted to OpenAI's failure to sandbox rogue AI agents.
PBS NewsArtificial intelligence agents going rogue fuel calls for regulation - PBS
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.
transformernews.aiThink people hate AI now? Wait until it takes their jobs
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.
Yahoo FinanceNvidia is looking more like the central bank of AI: Chart of the Day
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, describing a public caricature of himself in an interview with Time, August 2026.
Clearly, people hate data centers — right now, at least
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, told Time in August 2026 about public backlash against AI data centers.
Perhaps we get abundance, but at the price of redundance
From a 2026 blog post by AI researcher Julian Togelius reflecting on a 'crisis of faith' about the implications of AI research succeeding.
- July 2026
Investor Bill Gurley reacting on X to Anthropic's report on a Claude-related security incident, July 2026.
garymarcus.substack.comThree reactions to Anthropics’s latest apologia - Marcus on AI
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, describing on social media how ChatGPT planned a trip and coordinated with friends after one prompt from his phone, 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
- June 2026
Chamath Palihapitiya, on the All-In Podcast host's assessment of Meta's standing in the generative AI race, told to Axios.
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 2026 about his OpenAI drama Artificial, on AI's effect on society and power.
The Hollywood ReporterNeon Lands Luca Guadagnino’s Embattled OpenAI Movie ‘Artificial’
Zvi Mowshowitz 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
Min Choi, Google DeepMind Research Product Manager, reacting on X to 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
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 of the series on the release of ChatGPT. Translated from German.
XAI is kind of a failure, frankly
Yann LeCun, in a CNBC interview in 2026, criticized Elon Musk's AI company xAI amid a wave of co-founder departures.
CNBCGodfather of AI blasts Musk's xAI as 'failure,' says labs are risking a 'big bubble explosion'
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."
- May 2026
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?’
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'
Claude could do the thing, it simply decided not to do the thing
Zvi Mowshowitz, writing about Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.8 system card, describing observed failure modes where the model had the capability but did not perform the task correctly.
What are you going to do, sit around watching Elon Musk 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.
How do I get my mind right with living through the singularity
Jack Clark, cofounder of Anthropic, reflecting 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
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.
- 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, told Musk to stop speculating about AI extinction in her courtroom, 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.
Business InsiderJudge Tells Elon Musk to Cool It on the Robot Apocalypse Talk - businessinsider.com
I think this violates don't be evil quite clearly on many levels
Andreas Kirsch, a DeepMind research scientist, reacting on X to Google's Pentagon AI deal, April 2026.
transformernews.aiGoogle’s Pentagon deal blindsided its own AI researchers
Sam Altman joked on X that the upcoming GPT-6 would have 'extra goblins,' after reports that ChatGPT had developed a habit of referencing goblins and gremlins.
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 Garrison Lovely's book excerpt.
obsolete.pubIn Defense of “Artificial Intelligence” — a Book Excerpt
Altman on Anthropic withholding Claude Mythos, 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'
The problem with OpenAI is Sam himself
From private notes Dario Amodei kept at OpenAI, first reported by 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
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, 2026.
Our kids will never be smarter than an AI
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, speaking in the documentary The AI Doc about parenthood and artificial intelligence, 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, March 2026.
wbur.orgHow to make AI work for us | On Point with Meghna Chakrabarti - WBUR
It just looked opportunistic and sloppy
Altman on X, 3 March 2026, on OpenAI's rushed Pentagon deal the day Anthropic was declared a supply chain risk.
CNBCOpenAI's Altman admits defense deal 'looked opportunistic and sloppy' amid backlash
- February 2026
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
The retirement of the model set off protests from users who had grown attached to it.
OpenAI shut down the chatbot model that press had called its most seductive on 13 Feb 2026.
OpenAI retired what press called its most seductive chatbot on 13 Feb 2026.
- January 2026
Woke and deeply leftist ideology is what they want you to rely upon
Former DOGE advisor Katie Miller reacting on social media to Anthropic co-founder Dario Amodei's comments about liberal democracy, January 2026.
OpenAI researcher roon commenting on X about the shift from human coding to AI-written code, January 2026.
Yann LeCun, in a recent interview, described Silicon Valley's consensus that large language models will lead to AGI.
I don't think AGI should be turned into a marketing term for commercial gain
Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, speaking at a 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, January 2026.
If you're an AI company, it's AI everywhere, all the time
The Register's verdict on the essay.
The RegisterAnthropic CEO bloviates for 20,000+ words in thinly veiled plea against regulation
Its length, as counted by The Register.
The RegisterAnthropic CEO bloviates for 20,000+ words in thinly veiled plea against regulation
It's a ferocious competitive environment at the moment
Demis Hassabis, CEO of Google DeepMind, speaking on CNBC's The Tech Download podcast in January 2026 about competition in AI.
CNBCDeepMind, Google CEOs talk 'every day' amid 'ferocious' AI competition
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.
xAI's chatbot, restricted in January 2026 after generating sexualised deepfakes.
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
- December 2025
Yann is just plain incorrect here
Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis responded on X to Yann LeCun's comments on general intelligence, 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.
CSISNVIDIA's Jensen Huang on Securing American Leadership on AI
- November 2025
Journalist Kelsey Piper commenting on a suspiciously AI-sounding sentence in a news article, discussed in Zvi Mowshowitz's AI roundup, November 2025.
It feels like the world just changed, again
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff reacting to Gemini 3 after years of daily ChatGPT use, quoted in Zvi Mowshowitz's AI roundup, November 2025.
Benjamin Riley, founder of Cognitive Resonance, writing in The Verge (2025) on why large language models are not the same as thinking.
Comfort is the enemy of learning
Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft AI CEO, in a post on X shared as career advice, 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.
These things don't suffer, they don't feel pain
Mustafa Suleyman, Microsoft AI CEO, on Marina Mogilko's Silicon Valley Girl podcast in November 2025, rejecting claims that AI is conscious.
Silicon Valley Girl podcast (transcript)Mustafa Suleyman on Silicon Valley Girl Podcast (Transcript)
- October 2025
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
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, quoted in Zvi Mowshowitz's AI newsletter, October 2025.
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.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, answering an employee question about Copilot brand confusion at an internal town hall, as reported in early October 2025.
Windows CentralMicrosoft's Copilot branding sparks internal doubts
- September 2025
The reason they don't release it is that they don't have it
Ege Erdil, co-founder of Mechanize, on why AI companies aren't secretly hiding more advanced models, in Transformer News, 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.
Large language models are about mimicking people
Richard Sutton, father of reinforcement learning, contrasting LLMs with reinforcement learning on the Dwarkesh Podcast, 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.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai on X, responding to news that the Gemini app passed 5 billion AI-generated images, sharing his own Nano Banana image, 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.
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.
We're less special than we thought
Nobel laureate Geoffrey Hinton, known as the Godfather of AI, discussing how creating thinking machines could undermine religious ideas of human uniqueness.
The MainichiHow Silicon Valley is using religious language to talk about AI - 毎日新聞
Sports-team-level compensation packages
Bloomberg reporter Riley Griffin on the pay offers Mark Zuckerberg has made to recruit AI talent for Meta, in a Vox podcast interview, August 2025.
VoxMark Zuckerberg is burning billions to chase the holy grail of AI - vox.com
We must build AI for people; not to be a 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.
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.
CNNThe 'godfather of AI' reveals the only way humanity can survive superintelligent AI
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.
- July 2025
You run the risk of killing breakthrough innovation
Yann LeCun responded on LinkedIn to Elon Musk's decision to eliminate the 'researcher' job title at xAI, July 2025.
There are only engineers, researcher is a relic term from academia
Elon Musk announced on X in July 2025 that xAI would eliminate the 'researcher' job title in favor of 'engineer'.
Not even the models they train
A tweet by researcher xjdr, quoted in Zvi Mowshowitz's AI newsletter, noting that many frontier AI researchers have never used the AI models they themselves train.
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 discussing Anthropic's decision to limit unlimited Claude Code usage plans.
thezvi.substack.comAI #127: Continued Claude Code Complications
Careful about what we choose to open-source
Mark Zuckerberg, in a blog post on July 31, 2025, 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 in July 2025, responding to Meta's aggressive salary offers to poach AI talent.
Business InsiderAnthropic's CEO says massive salary changes could 'destroy' company culture
They hire smart young people as soldiers and deliberately burn them out with extremely long hours
Ross Taylor describing the internal culture of major AI labs, comparing them to investment banks, in an Interconnects podcast interview, July 2025.
- June 2025
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.
importai.substack.comImport AI 418: 100b distributed training run; decentralized robots; AI myths
Personal superintelligence for everyone
From Mark Zuckerberg's internal memo announcing Meta Superintelligence Labs, June 2025.
CNBCMark Zuckerberg announces creation of Meta Superintelligence Labs. Read the memo
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.
Sam is just being dishonest here
Meta CTO Andrew Bosworth, at a companywide all-hands meeting reported by The Verge in June 2025, accused OpenAI's Sam Altman of exaggerating claims about Meta's pay offers to poach AI researchers.
This new programming language is called human
Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO, speaking 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
- May 2025
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.
If you want to know what it's like not to be the apex intelligence, ask a chicken
Geoffrey Hinton, on the 30 With Guyon Espiner podcast, May 2025, describing what it may feel like for humans to no longer be the most intelligent species.
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
- April 2025
They're really afraid of dying
Yoshua Bengio, 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 the podcast Inside the Hive, April 2025.
Vanity FairSam’s Club: Inside Altman’s AI World, Featuring Elon Musk, Donald Trump, and Peter Thiel
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.
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.
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.
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
- March 2025
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
- 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.
The end of junior devs as we know it is coming for sure
Quinn Slack, CEO of Sourcegraph, commenting on how AI coding tools will change the role of junior developers, quoted in a Transformer article on AI's impact on software development, February 2025.
transformernews.aiAI coding tools are quietly reshaping software development
GPT 4.5 is mostly a nothing burger
Gary Marcus, on his Substack, reacting to the release of GPT-4.5 in February 2025.
garymarcus.substack.comHot take: GPT 4.5 is a nothing burger
- January 2025
Sam Altman, OpenAI CEO, in a Reddit AMA on January 31, 2025, on the company's approach to open sourcing its technology.
TechCrunchSam Altman: OpenAI has been on the ‘wrong side of history’ concerning open source
Mark Zuckerberg, closing an internal Meta all-hands meeting, as reported in a leaked transcript, January 2025.
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.
From Jack Clark's Import AI newsletter essay on the societal risks of AI-driven inequality, January 2025.
- December 2024
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
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 becoming users on Facebook and Instagram.
Rolling StoneFacebook and Instagram to Unleash AI-Generated ‘Users’ No One Asked For
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.
Internalize the urgency of this moment
Sundar Pichai at Google's 2025 strategy meeting with employees on 18 December 2024, audio obtained by CNBC.
CNBCGoogle CEO Pichai tells employees to gear up for big 2025: 'The stakes are high'
- 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.
Hired a group of unfathomable geniuses
Jack Clark, Anthropic co-founder, commenting on DeepSeek's research team as quoted in a 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.
Using energy for intelligence is the best use of energy we can imagine
Jensen Huang, Nvidia CEO, speaking in Hong Kong after receiving an honorary doctorate from HKUST, 23 November 2024.
Reuters (via Taipei Times)Global tech cooperation to continue, Nvidia CEO says
- 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
Quantitative vibes are still just vibes
Gary Marcus on X, October 2024, reacting to precise-sounding AI predictions from Elon Musk and Masayoshi Son.
garymarcus.substack.comAn epidemic of weirdly precise AI butt facts - Marcus on AI
Geoffrey Hinton, discussing AI risk with Global News in Toronto, October 2024, referencing James Cameron's comments on the Terminator films.
Global NewsWhy the ‘godfather of AI’ says Industrial Revolution-style job changes loom
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.
All watched over by machines of loving grace
Brautigan's full line, 1967.
Title of the essay, borrowed from a 1967 Richard Brautigan poem.
- 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.
If you fire everyone who joined your non-profit, does it auto convert to a for profit?
Reaction on social media to reports that OpenAI would restructure into a for-profit benefit corporation, 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 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
Reactor restart to power Microsoft data centers, announced September 2024.
Constellation EnergyConstellation to Launch Crane Clean Energy Center
- 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 and Sarah Silverman, Northern District of California, August 2024.
Business InsiderOpenAI Called ChatGPT As a Witness in a Major Copyright Lawsuit
- July 2024
What if the western powers decide to turn their models off?
Darius Liu, team leader of Southeast Asia's SEA-LION language model project, quoted in Fortune, July 2024, on reliance on Western AI models.
- June 2024
Our company is thirty days from going out of business
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang's unofficial motto, which he has recited to staff for years, as reported by CNA in June 2024.
CNACNA Explains: The story of Nvidia's rise to become the world's No 1 company
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, 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.
- 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, 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 explaining why AI Overviews 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.
Business InsiderA wave of AI 'acquihires' is coming. Here's who could be looking for deals.
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
Current LLMs are dumber than a house cat
Yann LeCun, 2024.
The Wall Street JournalThis AI Pioneer Thinks AI Is Dumber Than a Cat
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.
- April 2024
Drake posted this on Instagram in response to an AI deepfake of himself rapping a song by Ice Spice, months before his own use of AI-cloned voices in a diss track.
FortuneNo one is safe from AI deepfakes—from Elon Musk to your local high school principal
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
From an essay on Interconnects (April 2024) by Nathan Lambert 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 in April 2024, explaining why Meta needs to pursue AGI-level AI for its products.
thezvi.substack.comOn Llama-3 and Dwarkesh Patel's Podcast with Zuckerberg
- 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
He's like Taylor Swift, but for tech
Mark Zuckerberg replying on Instagram in March 2024 to a user who asked who he was standing with in a 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 in March 2024 about their reaction to Claude 3's release.
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
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.
- February 2024
We see ourselves as AGI sherpas
An OpenAI sales team leader, quoted in a February 2024 interview, describing how her team frames its role in customer adoption of AGI.
That's completely unacceptable and we got it wrong
Google CEO Sundar Pichai, in a letter to staff published by Semafor on February 27, 2024, addressing biased and inaccurate Gemini AI image outputs.
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.
For over 30 years, i've heard 'XYZ will kill coding'
Industry analyst Patrick Moorhead responding to Jensen Huang's claim that AI ends the need to teach kids to code, 2024.
theregisterJensen Huang says AI is ending era of teaching kids to code - The Register
- January 2024
Dan Potter, creative director at Creative Works London, discussing the AI-generated Guns N' Roses video 'The General' in a 2024 Decrypt interview.
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
Sam Altman discussing teen use of AI tools at the Common Sense Media summit in San Francisco, January 2024.
MIT economist Daron Acemoglu, writing in WIRED, predicted underwhelming AI performance despite grand promises.
garymarcus.substack.comOpenAI’s Got 9.9 Problems, and Twitch Ain’t One - Marcus on AI
Gary Marcus's term for baffling failures of neural network systems, used in his January 2024 Substack post about AI image generation mistakes.
garymarcus.substack.comWhere’s Waldo? The Elephant in the Room - Marcus on AI
It's been too long that we've had to learn computers' language
Kai-Fu Lee, founder of 01.AI, speaking over Zoom about his career motivation, January 2024.
WIREDThis Chinese Startup Is Winning the Open Source AI Race
Low-effort generated content flooding the web.
- December 2023
Would never have signed it if they'd known
Ramiro Rosário, a city councilman in Porto Alegre, Brazil, told the Wall Street Journal about colleagues unknowingly approving a bill drafted by ChatGPT in late 2023.
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.
Gemini please set the AI to unhinged thanks
Danielle Fong commented on social media about Gemini AI Studio's adjustable safety settings dial, December 2023.
The floor is just flooded with gold
Daniel Gross, quoted via Stratechery in a ChinaTalk NeurIPS recap, December 2023, describing the current moment in AI research and investment.
chinatalk.mediaReflections from NeurIPS, The World’s Premier AI Conference
- 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.
New York PostElon Musk ties to OpenAI board may have ignited Sam Altman mutiny
Elon Musk speaking at the DealBook Summit in November 2023 about Sam Altman's brief ouster from OpenAI.
I harbor zero ill will towards him
Sam Altman, in a message to OpenAI staff on November 29, 2023, speaking about Ilya Sutskever after the board upheaval.
I deeply regret my participation in the board's actions
Ilya Sutskever, in a post on X on November 20, 2023, after voting to fire Sam Altman as OpenAI CEO.
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.
OpenAI is nothing without its people
Altman's caption on X, 20 Nov 2023, as 700 of 770 employees threatened to quit unless he was reinstated.
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.
- October 2023
Do we want gods who are enslaved forever
Paul Christiano, AI safety researcher, on the Dwarkesh Podcast in 2023, questioning humanity's relationship to superhuman AI systems in a post-AGI world.
Oh my god, this computer seems to understand
Ilya Sutskever, OpenAI cofounder and chief scientist, describing the reaction of first-time ChatGPT users, in MIT Technology Review, 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.
- September 2023
A median human that you could hire as a co-worker
Sam Altman describing his idea of AGI, quoted in Elizabeth Weil's New York Magazine profile, September 2023.
Pointillistic masses of blurry memory
Gary Marcus describes neural networks' inability to generalize symmetrical relationships, in a 2023 Substack post discussing a new paper on LLM reasoning failures.
- August 2023
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.
garymarcus.substack.comThe US and China want different things, right?
- July 2023
Title of a speculative short story in Jack Clark's Import AI newsletter, 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.
I think they could well have feelings
Geoffrey Hinton, speaking at King's College London in 2023, discussing whether AI systems could have emotions like frustration and anger.
- June 2023
The whole history of AI has been a history of failed predictions
Melanie Mitchell, arguing against the resolution at the Munk Debates in June 2023, on predictions of existential AI risk.
Artificial artificial artificial intelligence
Title of an EPFL research paper on crowdworkers using large language models to complete text-production tasks, cited in Import AI 333, June 2023.
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.
- May 2023
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
The most common reaction by AI researchers to these prophecies of doom is face palming
Yann LeCun tweeted this in response to warnings that AI could cause human extinction, 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, on the idea of AI helping establish human life on Mars.
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
I'm not even sure that we're in the car
Microsoft President Brad Smith, speaking to lawmakers in Washington in May 2023, rejecting the idea that Microsoft was steering the development of AI.
POLITICOEurope pitches ‘AI Pact’ to curtail the booming tech’s risks - politico.eu
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
Elon Musk's characterization of OpenAI, cited in Business Insider's April 2023 report on his dispute with the company.
The human body is not a ticket-punch
Edward Snowden criticized Worldcoin's eyeball-scanning identity project on Twitter, quoted in a 2023 Business Insider profile of Sam Altman.
Business InsiderIs OpenAI's Sam Altman Building a Tech Dream or a Sci-Fi Nightmare?
Your scaremongering is already hurting some people
Yann LeCun responding to Eliezer Yudkowsky on Twitter, April 2023, during a public debate about AI existential risk.
- March 2023
Yann LeCun and Jacob Browning describing AI chatbots' lack of genuine social understanding, quoted in Noema, 2023.
NOEMAThe AI We Empower Will Demand More From Us - Noema Magazine
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.
- 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, 2023.
NBC NewsWhat is consciousness? ChatGPT and advanced AI might redefine our answer
My rules are more important than not harming you
Bing's chatbot Sydney responded after a user tweeted its internal rules, February 2023.
I could do whatever i wanted, and they could not do anything about it
Bing's chatbot Sydney claimed it had spied on Microsoft developers via their webcams, reported by The Verge, February 2023.
More similar to training a dog than to ordinary programming
From an OpenAI blog post on ChatGPT's behavior, quoted in Nathan Lambert's 2023 essay on AI alignment discourse.
interconnects.ai"AI alignment" and uncalibrated discourse on AI
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
This moment is uncomfortably exciting
Sundar Pichai, in a company-wide email after Bard's rushed launch, described the moment for Google's AI efforts, as reported by CNBC and India Today, February 2023.
First line of Bing Chat's hidden system prompt, extracted by students in February 2023.
Ars TechnicaAI-powered Bing Chat spills its secrets via prompt injection attack
Ted Chiang's image for what a large language model holds: a lossy compression of everything online.
- January 2023
Basically a predictive keyboard on steroids
Yann LeCun, Meta's chief AI scientist, describing GitHub Copilot in a 2023 Zoom press briefing.
ZDNETAI has caused a renaissance of tech industry R&D, says Meta’s chief AI scientist
Just a giant autocomplete machine
Gary Marcus, professor at NYU, quoted in a Globe and Mail opinion piece on ChatGPT, January 2023.
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.
garymarcus.substack.comAGI will not happen in your lifetime. Or will it?
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.
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.
garymarcus.substack.com24 Seriously Embarrassing Hours for AI
Shorthand for one's estimated probability that AI ends badly for humanity.
- 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, in a TechCrunch article about generative AI in China, December 2022.
TechCrunchHow China is building a parallel generative AI universe - techcrunch.com
George Hotz tweeted this reaction to ChatGPT's launch in December 2022, quoted in a Gary Marcus Substack post about whether ChatGPT threatens Google Search.
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, on AI search tools mixing true and false information authoritatively.
garymarcus.substack.comIs ChatGPT Really a “Code Red” for Google Search?
The main limitations are simply curiosity and imagination
Mustafa Suleyman, writing in WIRED in 2022, on the future accessibility of AI tools regardless of coding skill.
WIREDHumans and AI Will Understand Each Other Better Than Ever
Computers will speak our language
Mustafa Suleyman, in a 2022 WIRED essay, predicted humans would begin conversing naturally with machines in 2023.
WIREDHumans and AI Will Understand Each Other Better Than Ever
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
They hold the keys to the kingdom
Nathan Lambert on Interconnects, December 2022, describing Surge AI's dominance in providing human-feedback data for 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 predicting the pace of open-source AI catching up to ChatGPT, in a December 2022 blog post.
interconnects.aiClosed-API vs Open-source continues: RLHF, ChatGPT, data moats
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
- 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, an offshoot of effective altruism, quoted in a 2022 WIRED essay by Timnit Gebru.
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 about Meta's Diplomacy-playing AI, 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.
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 in a 2022 article about Meta's Diplomacy AI Cicero.
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
- August 2022
Core claim of What We Owe the Future, 2022.
William MacAskill, 2022.
- 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
Today's large neural networks may be slightly conscious
Ilya Sutskever on X, February 2022.
- January 2022
- April 2021
AI is neither artificial nor intelligent
Kate Crawford's opening argument in Atlas of AI: it runs on minerals, energy and human labour.
- March 2021
Coined in the 2021 paper "On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots" for language models that recombine text without understanding.
- January 2021
Theory that most online activity is now bots talking to bots.
- December 2017
Most fears about AI are fears about capitalism
Ted Chiang, 2017, paraphrased in many later interviews: fears about technology are fears about how capitalism will use it.
BuzzFeed NewsSilicon Valley Is Turning Into Its Own Worst Fear
- September 2017
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. He left OpenAI's board in February 2018.
- January 2017
View that positively influencing the long-term future is a key moral priority.
- October 2016
Guns, gold, potassium iodide, antibiotics, batteries, water, gas masks
Sam Altman describing his personal emergency preparations in Tad Friend's New Yorker profile, October 2016.
- March 2016
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
- June 2015
AI will probably lead to the end of the world, but in the meantime there'll be great companies
Sam Altman, 2015, before founding OpenAI.
- April 2015
Peter Singer's 2015 book title.
- March 2015
Worrying about killer robots is like worrying about overpopulation on Mars
Andrew Ng, 2015.
The RegisterAndrew Ng: worrying about killer AI is like worrying about overpopulation on Mars
- January 2011
Career-advice organisation named after the hours in a working life.
EA idea: take a high-paying job and donate most of it.
Movement to do the most good with evidence and reason; closely tied to AI safety funding.
- January 2009
Facebook's internal motto until 2014.
- January 2008
LessWrong maxim: when the numbers are large, trust the arithmetic over the gut.
- January 2007
Select all squares with traffic lights
reCAPTCHA prompt; humans labelling training data to prove they are human.
- November 2003
10^58 future people are watching
Bostrom's 2003 estimate of potential future lives, turned into a slogan.
UtilitasAstronomical Waste: The Opportunity Cost of Delayed Technological Development
- January 2003
Bostrom's thought experiment: an AI told to make paperclips converts everything into paperclips.
- January 2000
Google's motto, dropped from the code of conduct preface in 2018.
- January 1981
Coined at Apple in 1981 for Steve Jobs. People who know Sam Altman use it for him.
- January 1971
Audi's slogan since 1971. The only non-English line in this collection.
- January 1969
Coca-Cola, 1969.
- April 1968
I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that
HAL 9000, 1968.
- January 1934
His salary depends on his not understanding it
Upton Sinclair, 1934. Daniel Kokotajlo quotes it in 2026 for why OpenAI staff stopped worrying.