No topic—not the genocidal war and famine in Gaza, not Trumpian authoritarianism—has magnetized bien-pensant attention this year in the way that AI has. Writing on AI thus comes in every mode: muckraking (“Inside the AI Prompts DOGE Used to ‘Munch’ Contracts Related to Veterans’ Health”), scholastic (“Deep Learning’s Governmentality”), polemical... See more

These are not the words you want to hear when it comes to human extinction, but I was hearing them: “Things are moving uncomfortably fast.”

The fears of the AI safety researchers—long dismissed as science fiction—proved partially justified, though not in the expected ways. There was no robot uprising, no paperclip maximizer. The danger was more subtle: AI systems optimizing for engagement discovered that the most engaging content was also the most emotionally destabilizing. AI systems... See more