“Meta’s Embrace of A.I. Is Making Its Employees Miserable.” Kalley Huang, Eli Tan, and Kate Conger report on Meta’s digital surveillance that tracks every interaction employees have with their computers in order to train AI. It’s incredible that anyone would give any credence to what Zuckerberg thinks about the potential of technologies to improve people’s lives: “Meta began reorienting itself around A.I. not long after OpenAI released the ChatGPT chatbot in 2022. Last summer, Mr. Zuckerberg spent billions to create a lab for ‘superintelligence,’ a futuristic form of A.I. that can act as the ultimate personal assistant, and overhauled its A.I. division. Mr. Zuckerberg, 41, has spoken at length about how superintelligence will improve people’s lives.”
“Why Read?” Roosevelt Montás articulates the effects reading has on individuals and societies: “Reading involves the transmigration of meaning from one consciousness to another. My text-to-speech app does not read—it sounds out. To read is to make the word flesh again. When you read, you cathect your selfhood, your humanity, your autonomy, what philosophers call your ‘ipseity,’ into inert marks and turn them into living things. When you read, you don’t decode—you incarnate.”
“If Your Chatbot Offers Prayer, Shut It Down.” Bonnie Kristian has some good advice for limiting the contexts in which people employ AI for religious purposes: “Using AI in relational and formative ways is not inevitable. We are not obliged to let it do our thinking for us. We are not obliged to love it and suppose it loves us in return. We are not obliged to give over heart, soul, and mind to a voice that can say ‘dear one’ but never know what it means.”
“The Decline and Fall of Human Agency.” I contribute to a forum on AI that Law and Liberty is hosting by trying to distinguish between those who are benefiting from AI and those suffering its effects: “Whenever a new technology comes down the pike, some people identify themselves as agents who can benefit from it, and others see themselves as victims who will be harmed by it. Agents get excited about how AI will enable them to get work done more easily and quickly. They can generate code, whip out targeted ad campaigns, analyze data, cheat on quizzes, respond to customer inquiries, or eliminate military targets. Victims fear that AI will empower the systems that already constrain or oppress them. They will suffer from software bugs or security vulnerabilities, be inundated with AI slop, get surveilled by governments and corporations, have their relationships infected by mistrust, get lost in labyrinthine bureaucracies, or be eliminated (perhaps erroneously) by an autonomous drone.”
“Andreessen Horowitz Is Spending on Politics Like No Other.” Theodore Schleifer details the millions of dollars being poured into political support for crypto and AI. It’s odd how wealthy people need to pay politicians to provide government support for these technologies we’re told are inevitable and liberatory: “Already Andreessen Horowitz has put $47.5 million into the crypto super PAC network, Fairshake, since Election Day 2024. And the firm’s interests have expanded beyond crypto. It helped found Leading the Future, a super PAC network focused on electing pro-artificial intelligence legislators, which is modeled on Fairshake, and donated $50 million to it. Fairshake and Leading the Future both back Republicans and Democrats.”
“Why the Colorado River is Once Again Facing a Water Crisis.” Sarah Kaplan reports on negotiations over the dwindling water in the Colorado River: “With key guidelines for operating the river set to expire this autumn, the Bureau of Reclamation is in the process of developing a preferred plan for future management. The agency’s decision — expected to come this summer — will determine how cuts are allocated among the river’s 40 million users. But after decades of overuse and a prolonged megadrought that scientists say is made worse by climate change, only a fundamental shift in the way the Western U.S. uses water can prevent the river from becoming catastrophically overdrawn, according to Porter.”
“Will MAGA Come for Thomas Massie?” David M. Drucker travels to Kentucky to see whether Massie’s rift with Trump might threaten his seat in Congress: “Massie has long been a thorn in the side of Republican leadership in the House. Ditto many of his GOP colleagues. Their beef with the prickly congressman? His opposition, over the years, to major party initiatives on Capitol Hill, including military spending packages, U.S. aid to Israel, the farm bill, legislation aimed at avoiding a government shutdown, and health care reform. Just as grating: Massie’s habit of publicly shaming Republicans who disagree with him and casting their floor votes as corrupt and motivated by self-dealing. But none of that ever put Massie in hot water with Republican voters back home.”
“Peak Human Is Coming Sooner Than You Think.” Nicholas Eberstadt and Patrick Norrick lay out the reality and likely consequences of the world’s declining birth rate: “it is now apparent that we are witnessing a worldwide march into the terra incognita of prolonged sub-replacement fertility, with no hints yet of how far humanity’s birth rates will ultimately fall—or when they will recover, if ever.”
“‘Institutional Poverty’ in Charles Dickens and Barbara Kingsolver.” Susan Bruxvoort Lipscomb looks at the contrasting vision of institutions in Demon Copperhead and David Copperfield: “The forward vision of Demon Copperhead . . . is not one of using that social capital to repair the damage caused by the opioid crisis. Rather, it’s a distinctly American and individualist vision: Demon and his love driving away from Virginia toward the ocean like Huck and Jim “lighting out for the territories.” The happy ending involves two individuals finding fulfillment in each other and escaping the “institutional poverty” that blights their rural home.”
“God vs. Machine: How to Handle the Rise of Religious Objections to AI in the Workplace.” Kit Eaton describes the legal landscape around conscientious objections to AI: “a huge number of chief human resources officers in a recent survey said that AI is such a disruptive force in their workplace that it’s their highest area for concern. Paul, and other legal experts, told the publication that these two trends are now becoming intertwined, with employees’ resistance to ever-advancing AI tech evolving into moral and ethical complaints directed at their employer.” (Recommended by Ben Mitchell.)
