Severin Matusek

By volume alone, slop may be the most visible and successful by-product of the generative-AI era to date. It is also a hallmark of what I’ve previously described as a collective delusion around artificial intelligence—where the breathless hype and imagined future of building a godlike superintelligence and curing cancer collides with the dull... See more

This is a chance to bring warmth and fun into an increasingly lonely and isolated world.

Not because people are necessarily cruel, but because these versions are simply better adapted for this new world where beating (or cheating) the system is the only rational strategy.

For some people, in considering this possibility, the question naturally arises: “That sounds nice, but how is a tiny software company supposed to compete with huge and well-funded companies?” The answer is that you don’t really have to. You just have to get an understanding of the proper pace and scale of whatever your endeavor is. Get there, and... See more

Holly+ represents the future that Herndon and Dryhurst anticipate for music, art, and literature: a world of “infinite media,” in which anyone can adjust, adapt, or iterate on the work, talents, and traits of others.

As artist and AI collaborator Refik Anadol says, “This is pure collaboration , imagination with a machine.”

Cyberfeminism—a capacious term the Index seeks to both bring into view and complicate—asks us to consider how the integration of technology into our lives should affect our understanding of the gendered self and how technology itself can serve as a tool of liberation, oppression, and intellectual dissemination.

In 2021, Ethiopia actually began building its own social media site as a response to Facebook’s alleged incitement of ethnic massacres. And more recently, Japan funnelled taxpayer money into the dating app Tapple, in a bid to fix the nation’s declining marriage and birth rates.