July 8, 2025
(The Atlantic) – Although many skeptics have overreacted, rejecting sound science in favor of quack theories, they’ve gotten one thing right: A noble profession has been corrupted by politics. This became obvious during the pandemic, but the politicization of the … Read More
July 3, 2025
(Front Porch Republic) – One does not need too much imagination to understand how Leopold’s critique of over-mechanized hunting is generalizable to the relationship between technology and all facets of life. In the case of large language models and their … Read More
July 1, 2025
(The New Atlantis) – The new cold war means a race with China over AI, biotech, and more. This poses a hard dilemma: win by embracing technologies that make us more like our enemy — or protect ourselves from tech … Read More
June 30, 2025
(Wall Street Journal) – Not even AI’s creators understand why these systems produce the output they do. They’re grown, not programmed—fed the entire internet, from Shakespeare to terrorist manifestos, until an alien intelligence emerges through a learning process we barely … Read More
June 24, 2025
(New York Times) – Robert F. Kennedy Jr., secretary of health and human services, is correct that reported autism rates have exploded in the last 30 years — they’ve increased roughly 60-fold — but he is dead wrong about the … Read More
June 24, 2025
(Aeon) – The misunderstood story of Phineas Gage shows that we need a new way of understanding the experiences of brain injury survivors We mostly used the term ‘disinhibition’ as a mitigation: an invitation to think creatively about how to … Read More
June 19, 2025
(Aeon) – Our crisis of work and technology is one in which too many people feel that nobody sees them as a fellow human being Instead, pundits and policymakers are applying the word ‘loneliness’ to address a real and growing … Read More
June 19, 2025
(Christianity Today) – A computer’s praise or petition sounds a lot like our human Christianese. That doesn’t make them equivalent. At a recent Gospel Coalition conference, celebrity pastor John Piper told his audience about a task he had given ChatGPT: … Read More
June 18, 2025
(The Atlantic) – The anomalies are sometimes strange and very concerning. Recent updates have caused ChatGPT to become aggressively obsequious and the Grok chatbot, on X, to fixate on a conspiracy theory about “white genocide.” (X later attributed the problem … Read More
June 18, 2025
(Plough) – Tom Andrew started out as a pediatrician but became a forensic pathologist, initially serving the City of New York before being appointed Chief Medical Examiner for the State of New Hampshire. When he had been serving in this … Read More
June 18, 2025
(Intelligencer) – The utter clumsiness of the overall design here is made more galling by its lack of purpose. Whom is this feed for? Does Meta imagine a feed of non sequitur slop will provide a solid foundation for a … Read More
June 13, 2025
(The Conversation) – When thoughtfully implemented, AI tools have the potential to enhance safety and efficiency. For instance, predictive models have assisted social workers to prioritize high-risk cases and intervene earlier. But as a social worker with 15 years of … Read More
June 12, 2025
(Sam Altman’s Blog) – We are past the event horizon; the takeoff has started. Humanity is close to building digital superintelligence, and at least so far it’s much less weird than it seems like it should be. Robots are not … Read More
June 12, 2025
(Business Insider) – Meta’s stand-alone AI app launched in late April, and like many people, my first thought was, “Huh?” After trying it out a little, my next thought was, “Oh no.” A few weeks later, after the initial surge … Read More
June 11, 2025
(Wall Street Journal) – Gov. Kathy Hochul can veto a law with few safeguards and no waiting period. New York’s Legislature embraces every progressive cause, and the latest is making it easier for people to kill themselves. The state Senate … Read More
June 10, 2025
(The Guardian) – Nan held my hand, convincing me this was what they wanted. I felt like a little girl, crying and being comforted by my grandmother one last time In their final moments, Ron and Irene lay together in … Read More
June 10, 2025
(The Atlantic) – As a professional writer, my first thought was that this would be unnecessary, at best. At worst, it would be an outrage. The philosopher Martin Heidegger held that someone’s death is a thing that is truly their … Read More
June 10, 2025
(MedPage Today) – The risks of social media-driven self-diagnosis extend beyond simple misinformation. Patients may engage in inappropriate self-treatment based on misdiagnosis, or experience a nocebo effect where expected symptoms begin to manifest simply because they anticipate them. Perhaps most … Read More
June 9, 2025
(New York Times) – Many experts argue that addiction is, in essence, love gone awry: a singular passion directed destructively at a substance or activity rather than an appropriate person. With the advent of A.I. companions — including some intended … Read More
June 9, 2025
(The Conversation) – As more of us live longer, can robots help us maintain healthier, more independent and dignified lives? The robots I’ve been studying are friendly, helpful machines that can talk, remind, monitor – and even offer a form … Read More
May 30, 2025
(The Guardian) – I’ve thought a lot about why I’m writing this. I know that I’m repelled by the kind of spiritual vultures who might scour Max’s story for shareable aphorisms, and that ideally, I’d like to slap them with … Read More
May 30, 2025
(The Hedgehog Review) – What a psychotherapist learned during his chats with a large language model. Under intellectual, logical, and ethical pressure, Claude began producing responses that mimicked the structure of introspection. It examined its own phrasing. It noted its … Read More
May 27, 2025
(TIME) – An open letter published today calls for “all AI labs to immediately pause for at least 6 months the training of AI systems more powerful than GPT-4.” This 6-month moratorium would be better than no moratorium. I have … Read More
May 26, 2025
(MedPage Today) – Despite my medical credentials, my concerns were dismissed. It took my husband calling my doctor directly to save my life. I was hemorrhaging internally, requiring multiple blood transfusions and a 2-week hospital stay. My family feared they … Read More
May 26, 2025
(MIT Technology Review) – This week, two new leaders at the US Food and Drug Administration announced plans to limit access to covid vaccines, arguing that there is not much evidence to support the value of annual shots in healthy … Read More
