Propaganda and deceit are a feature of AI, not its downfall.
Why does it matter how we talk about artificial intelligence? Some, mainly tech firms and their useful idiots, maintain we are about to immanentize the eschaton (which translates roughly as: dissolve all of society’s problems). Others insist we are summoning a false god in the form of an artificial general intelligence that will destroy civilization. Those feelings of awe and terror aren’t particularly assuaged by the numbers: Tens of billions of dollars are raised each year by startups in this sector—incumbents hope to raise trillions more.
The maniac who blew himself up outside a Palm Springs fertility clinic is our latest High Desert dingbat to make the national news. Luckily, those injured in the Palm Springs terror attack have been treated and released from the hospital. But who bombs fertility clinics? Meet America’s worst new subculture, the violent anti-natalists, and their new hero from Twentynine Palms.
This is EPISODE #243: THE MAD BOMBER OF TWENTYNINE PALMS with geographically appropriate soundscapes by RedBlueBlackSilver. Written & hosted by Ken Layne. Listen on the radio in Joshua Tree and across the Mojave High Desert on Z 107.7 FM, 10-11 p.m. Fridays.
Surviving Progress explores the dangerous paradox at the heart of modern civilization: what we call “progress” might actually be leading us toward collapse.
Based on Ronald Wright’s concept of the “progress trap,” this documentary journeys through history, economics, biology, and politics to reveal how technological advancement, debt, overconsumption, and ecological destruction are threatening the future of humanity.
Ronald Wright’s bestseller A Short History of Progress inspired this cinematic requiem to progress-as-usual. Throughout human history, what seemed like progress often backfired.
Some of the world’s foremost thinkers, activists, bankers, and scientists challenge us to overcome progress traps, which destroyed past civilizations and lie treacherously embedded in our own.
With powerful visuals, expert commentary, and haunting parallels to the fall of past empires, the film challenges viewers to rethink growth, power, and sustainability. Are we too smart for our own survival, or is there still time to change course?
We chat with linguist and cognitive scientist Hagen Blix about his new book Why We Fear AI (co-authored with computer scientist Ingeborg Glimmer) about how the technical qualities of AI – especially LLM chatbots – take the alienation (and seemingly alien power) of capital to the next level. What happens when the social logic of capital — which appears to be a motive force with no motivator — is channeled through generative technologies that appear to be texts with no author? People see an entity that must be feared and worshipped.
Researchers have found that ChatGPT “power users,” or those who use it the most and at the longest durations, are becoming dependent upon — or even addicted to — the chatbot.
In a new joint study, researchers with OpenAI and the MIT Media Lab found that this small subset of ChatGPT users engaged in more “problematic use,” defined in the paper as “indicators of addiction… including preoccupation, withdrawal symptoms, loss of control, and mood modification.”
To get there, the MIT and OpenAI team surveyed thousands of ChatGPT users to glean not only how they felt about the chatbot, but also to study what kinds of “affective cues,” which was defined in a joint summary of the research as “aspects of interactions that indicate empathy, affection, or support,” they used when chatting with it.
Though the vast majority of people surveyed didn’t engage emotionally with ChatGPT, those who used the chatbot for longer periods of time seemed to start considering it to be a “friend.” The survey participants who chatted with ChatGPT the longest tended to be lonelier and get more stressed out over subtle changes in the model’s behavior, too.
Archived WSJ article Meta’s CEO is promoting a future where artificial intelligence is increasingly intertwined with people’s lives
Mark Zuckerberg wants you to have AI friends, an AI therapist and AI business agents.
In Zuckerberg’s vision for a new digital future, artificial-intelligence friends outnumber human companions and chatbot experiences supplant therapists, ad agencies and coders. AI will play a central role in the human experience, the Facebook co-founder and CEO of Meta Platforms has said in a series of recent podcasts, interviews and public appearances.
“I think people are going to want a system that knows them well and that kind of understands them in the way that their feed algorithms do,” Zuckerberg said Tuesday during an onstage interview with Stripe co-founder and president John Collison at Stripe’s annual conference.
As the Middle East braces for another year of extreme heat, climate change is turning the soil to dust in the landscape that has long been known as the fertile crescent — and water has become a new source of conflict.
Alissa J. Rubin, who covers the Middle East, tells the story of Iraq’s water crisis and what it means for the world.
Guest: Alissa J. Rubin, a senior Middle East correspondent for The New York Times.
Background reading:
From 2023: A climate warning from the cradle of civilization.
Features reporter Ariana Bindman visits SF’s depressing new locale in this column
Sam Altman’s new human verification system, the Orb, was put to the test in downtown San Francisco on May 1, 2025. Ariana Bindman/SFGATE
It’s a cool Thursday morning in downtown San Francisco, and I’m walking up Powell Street through a once-familiar-looking Union Square.
As I stroll past the bones of retail giants, “For Lease” signs mark abandoned storefronts like lurid headstones. I see the empty Uniqlo, H&M and Forever21, along with a vacant Walgreens and the former Diesel outpost, which looms over Market Street like a pillaged kingdom. Overall, the neighborhood feels less like an economic epicenter and more like a consumerist graveyard.
But among these depressing corporate relics is an unusual and perhaps welcome sight: groups of stylish young people with mullets, micro-tattoos and designer clothes hobnobbing inside a new, sleek retail space on Geary Street. From a distance, it’s unclear what, exactly, it’s supposed to be, or what types of products it intends to sell.
Inside, EDM blasts from a coffee cart while baristas pour oat milk lattes and flat whites. In front of them is a wooden, cage-like structure lined with mysterious-looking white spheres. But this isn’t a modern art gallery opening or a new Mac store: hordes of tech enthusiasts and local news crews are here to celebrate the unveiling of Sam Altman’s new — and dystopian — “proof of human” technology, also known as the Orb.
