Wittgenstein’s Apocalypse

AI and the crisis of meaning Alexander Stern “It isn’t absurd,” the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote in 1947, “to believe that the age of science and technology is the beginning of the end for humanity.” The proposition is looking less absurd by the day: AI may eventually turn on us; industrialization has turned the planet… Read More Wittgenstein’s Apocalypse

AI got the blame for the Iran school bombing. The truth is far more worrying

LLMs-gone-rogue dominated coverage, but had nothing to do with the targeting. Instead, it was choices made by human beings, over many years, that gave us this atrocity By Kevin T Baker On the first morning of Operation Epic Fury, 28 February 2026, American forces struck the Shajareh Tayyebeh primary school in Minab, in southern Iran, hitting the… Read More AI got the blame for the Iran school bombing. The truth is far more worrying

Keyboard warriors

Alex Karp, Palantirianism, and the tech industry’s embrace of total war. By Jacob Silverman Last July, four high-ranking tech executives — all of them involved with artificial intelligence — were sworn into the US Army Reserves with the rank of lieutenant colonel. They were part of a new unit called Detachment 201, also known as the… Read More Keyboard warriors

Modern labour hazards: India’s female workers watching hours of abusive content to train AI

Women in rural communities describe trauma of moderating violent and pornographic content for global tech companies… content moderation belongs in the category of dangerous work, comparable to any lethal industry: Milagros Miceli, sociologist Anuj Behal On the veranda of her family’s home, with her laptop balanced on a mud slab built into the wall, Monsumi… Read More Modern labour hazards: India’s female workers watching hours of abusive content to train AI

Social Media Is Absolutely Nuking Children’s Brains, New Research Finds

“Our study suggests that it is specifically social media that affects children’s ability to concentrate.” By Victor Tangermann A barrage of AI-generated brain rot is haunting children across numerous screens, from personal smartphones to school-issued laptops to televisions. Social media is adding significantly to that cacophony, making it harder than ever for kids to concentrate. Now, new research… Read More Social Media Is Absolutely Nuking Children’s Brains, New Research Finds

What AI doesn’t know: we could be creating a global ‘knowledge collapse’ / Study Finds More Than Half Of AI’s References Are Fabricated or Erroroneous

As GenAI becomes the primary way to find information, local and traditional wisdom is being lost. And we are only beginning to realise what we’re missing… GenAI is trained on massive datasets of text from sources such as books, articles, websites and transcripts – hence the name “large language model” (LLM). But this “training data”… Read More What AI doesn’t know: we could be creating a global ‘knowledge collapse’ / Study Finds More Than Half Of AI’s References Are Fabricated or Erroroneous

‘You’re not rushing. You’re just ready:’ Parents say ChatGPT encouraged son to kill himself

NB: This is the most horrifying example of what AI represents and what it can do to humanity. This is pure nihilism. I don’t need to say more. DS Zane Shamblin sat alone in his car with a loaded handgun, his face illuminated in the predawn dark by the dull glow of a phone. He… Read More ‘You’re not rushing. You’re just ready:’ Parents say ChatGPT encouraged son to kill himself