Thoughts unfit for contemporary survival
Leo XIV's encyclical on AI skips the two great distractions — the conscious machine and the apocalypse — and focuses on the slow, unglamorous damage to information, work, and freedom happening right now.
If a writer uses AI to smooth a clunky sentence, have they betrayed you? What if they used it to draft a headline? Or a whole paragraph? The New York Times freelancer case is the occasion, but the real question is older — and starts with no longer seeing LLMs as alien intelligences.
A new study warns of "epistemia"—the illusion of knowledge in AI. But is this really new? From Plato to Frankfurt's "Bullshit," an exploration of the ancient gap between fluency and truth, asking if a mindless machine can still serve as a tool for understanding the world.
Are AI-generated images false? To answer, we must understand what makes any image true. Images play various roles in different language games—and AI is wiping the slate clean of the codes we used to read them.
LLMs write beautifully about suffering, but they're not suffering – they're choosing statistically probable words. Meanwhile, an octopus avoids painful chambers, remembers, anticipates. One manipulates symbols; the other experiences genuine awareness.
From moon mission candidate to disillusioned observer: photographer Rhiannon Adam reveals how space—humanity's symbol of freedom—has become a playground for billionaires. An interview about photography as truth, AI as a mirror of our biases, and the betrayal of our collective dreams
