“Your body’s data was only valuable once.”
artificial intelligence
Posted inEditor's Pick
I Spent a Week Recording Myself Doing Chores for Money. Who’s the Robot Now?
“Cooking. Doing laundry. Tidying up. All your household tasks can be turned into data to train future humanoids—if you’re prepared for the consequences.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Building an AI Data Center in Pine Island, Minnesota
“I learned about the data center as soon as the scrappy sign was erected. I was thrilled to see something new; my drive hasn’t changed much in three years. I was less thrilled for Pine Island, which has, like many rural Midwestern towns, become an unlikely microcosm of the AI debate.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Prehistory of A.I. Slop
“Before ChatGPT, there was the Plot Robot, Auto-Beatnik, and a century’s worth of schemes for automating authorship.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Chinese Whiz Kids of Silicon Valley
“Chinese-born tech workers have fueled Silicon Valley for decades. In the AI era, they’re superstars.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
ChatGPT Gave Me Chilling Advice—as I Simulated Planning a Mass Shooting
“I asked about imitating the Uvalde attacker, defending against police gunfire, and more—everything short of directly stating intent to kill.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
What Will It Take to Get AI Out of Schools?
“The tech world assumes that AI-aided education is necessary and inevitable. A growing number of parents, educators, and cognitive scientists say the opposite.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The First Tomato to Know Everything
“On gray literature and Webster’s Timeline History books.”
Posted inQuestionnaire
The Longreads Questionnaire, Featuring Vauhini Vara
The author of Searches: Selfhood in the Digital Age and The Immortal King Rao on memorable meals and books about whales.
Posted inEditor's Pick
Politics After Literacy
“Postliteracy won’t replace reason with madness, but it might give us madness of a new and different type.”