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When OpenAI launched ChatGPT in November 2022, the media and talking heads quickly adopted the company’s mantra that the world had changed. Generative AI was about to revolutionize everything, and that included presenting a challenge to some of the juggernauts that had previously defined the digital economy. None was more…

When a commencement speaker at the University of Central Florida intoned that “AI is the next industrial revolution,” she was met with a chorus of thundering boos from the graduating students in attendance. The mass disapproval left the orator, Gloria Caulfield, Vice President of Strategic Alliances for Tavistock Development Company,…

Anti-viral is presented in partnership with Sublime, a creative thinking tool and communal search engine designed to help you collect, connect, and create from what inspires you — away from infinite feeds and AI slop. Sublime is my favorite kind of business — the small kind! — and they’re…

Generative AI has upended few fields as thoroughly or as rapidly as the visual arts. Over the last few years, I’ve written a lot about the ways AI has impacted working artists; I’ve interviewed illustrators pursuing class action lawsuits against AI firms, attended rallies, conferences and legislative hearings where…

So, there’s a piece in Jacobin arguing that data center moratoria are a “terrible idea” making the rounds on social media and beyond. It’s pretty easy to see why this makes for some good discourse; naturally, there’s going to be frisson among AI optimists when a perceived opponent—here, the nation’s…

On the morning of April 20 in the year 15 AS (After Steve), or 2026 on the calendar of the non-believers, white lights graced the exterior of the circular cathedral of Apple Park. The Church’s holy disciples gathered in the pews of the Steve Jobs Temple, while the more than…

Greetings all. In today’s newsletter:

• Palantir’s pugilistic, race-bating manifesto has sparked controversy. But this latest bit of ‘cartoon villainy’ is actually a sign of its growing weakness

• A horrifying chart on AI-generated linguistic trends

• Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO of 15 years, is leaving. His real legacy probably isn’t what you…

Didn’t you hear? There’s a glorious future on the horizon, if only we allow the CEOs of major tech and AI companies to do whatever they want with us and our world.

There’s a lot they want us to sacrifice in the pursuit of that goal: our information environment, human…

Monterey Park, a small city seven miles east of downtown Los Angeles, became the first in California to pass a measure permanently banning the construction of data centers. The city council voted unanimously on three overlapping ordinances that officially label data centers a public nuisance, and “prohibit all data…

With the backlash against AI escalating dramatically, I can’t imagine a better time to consider the history of what the scholar Thomas Dekeyser terms the “techno-negative.” Dekeyser has just published a new book on the subject, titled, fittingly, Techno-Negative: A Long History of Refusing the Machine, with the…