Culture
Refik Anadol, The Art World’s Happy Warrior for A.I.
Anadol enjoyed an early triumph in 2018, when he lit up the silver sails of the Walt Disney Concert Hall, in Los Angeles, with projections…
Tag
artificial intelligence (a.i.)
Culture
Did a Chatbot Write a Prize-Winning Story? Does It Matter?
In early May, the Commonwealth Foundation announced the five regional winners for its influential Short Story Prize, which recognizes…
Culture
Instead of Taking Your Job, A.I. Might Transform It
In search of a better understanding of our current moment, I recently went looking for A.I. adopters outside the tech industry. I asked…
Business
A Booming Shadow Market of Sketchy A.I. Investments
Earlier this month, a self-identified venture capitalist and tech-startup adviser named Ash Arora went viral on X for a brag about A.I.…
News
The Kirkification of Our Troubled Times
For this week’s Infinite Scroll column, Brady Brickner-Wood is filling in for Kyle Chayka. A few months ago, the pro-Iran group Akhbar…
Culture
A.I. Is Making Influencing Even Faker
The virtual influencer is not, strictly speaking, new. In 2016, a C.G.I. avatar named Lil Miquela appeared on Instagram, presenting as an…
Business
Inside the World-Conquering Rise of the Micro-Drama
The regretful colonel in “Silent Ex-Wife” is played by Ben Whalen, a thirty-eight-year-old actor from New York. In the fall of 2023, after…
News
What Will It Take to Get A.I. Out of Schools?
The message from the White House—and, often, from tech companies and public schools—is that Figure 03 and its A.I. militia are…
Business
A.I. Has a Message Problem of Its Own Making
OpenAI’s Sam Altman wants to “de-escalate” the rhetoric around A.I. But if you tell people that your product will upend their way of life,…
Business
Is It Wrong to Write a Book with A.I.?
And yet the value of a novel isn’t only in its prose. On Amazon, “Shy Girl” has a rating of four out of five stars, based on input from…
News
The Team Behind the A.I. Lego-Style Videos That Lampoon Trump’s War in Iran
Explosive News posted its first Lego-style videos during the U.S. and Israel’s bombing campaign on Iranian nuclear facilities last June.…
Culture
In the Age of A.I., What Is Taste? And Do We Still Have It?
With artificial intelligence continuing to dominate corporate strategies and news headlines, Silicon Valley has embraced a new buzzword,…
Business
Silicon Valley’s Favorite Doomsaying Philosopher
Land has always been a controversial figure, but not for the same reasons he is now. In the nineties, at Warwick, he led the Cybernetic…
Culture
The Robot and the Philosopher
Sophia wasn’t particularly talkative that evening. Earlier that day, she’d been onstage at the conference I was attending and had been…
Business
Why A.I. Didn’t Transform Our Lives in 2025
One year ago, Sam Altman, the C.E.O. of OpenAI, made a bold prediction: “We believe that, in 2025, we may see the first AI agents ‘join…
Culture
The Role of Doctors Is Changing Forever
Historically, medicine’s power rested on a specific kind of cultural authority—the ability to determine not only what diseases exist, who…
News
Five Things That Changed the Media in 2025
The true-crime genre has been a cornerstone of the podcast market for years, and we could very well see a proliferation of newsletters…
Culture
Is A.I. Actually a Bubble?
Luckily for managers, building human capital takes a long time. Or, at least, it used to: artificial intelligence is, among other things,…
Culture
That New Hit Song on Spotify? It Was Made by A.I.
Nick Arter, a thirty-five-year-old in Washington, D.C., never quite managed to become a professional musician the old-fashioned way. He…
News
What Hollywood Is Missing About A.I.
In 2025, A.I. seems to pop up on TV nearly as often as it does in real life. On the hospital-mockumentary sitcom “St. Denis Medical,” a…
Culture
TextEdit and the Relief of Simple Software
The so-called desktop first appeared on a home computer in 1981, with the release of the Xerox 8010 Star Information System. That device…
Business
Will A.I. Trap You in the “Permanent Underclass”?
The “lumpenproletariat,” according to “The Communist Manifesto,” is “the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest…
News
Should College Get Harder?
Around twenty years ago, when I was a graduate student in English, I taught a class in a special observation room at my university’s…
Culture
Putting ChatGPT on the Couch
I’m still not sure whose idea it was for me to be Casper’s therapist—mine or his. I know I mentioned my profession to him, but I am pretty…