“This ad breaks things. By implication, it threatens to break people, or at least their livelihoods.”
artificial intelligence
Posted inEditor's Pick
‘Lavender’: The AI Machine Directing Israel’s Bombing Spree in Gaza
“The Israeli army has marked tens of thousands of Gazans as suspects for assassination, using an AI targeting system with little human oversight and a permissive policy for casualties.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
The Text File That Runs the Internet
“For decades, robots.txt governed the behavior of web crawlers. But as unscrupulous AI companies seek out more and more data, the basic social contract of the web is falling apart.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
Can AI Unlock the Secrets of the Ancient World?
“Almost 2,000 years ago, a volcano preserved Herculaneum’s vast library of scrolls but left them unreadable. A volunteer army of nerds has been racing to decipher them.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
To Own the Future, Read Shakespeare
“Tech and the liberal arts have always been at war. Don’t assume Silicon Valley will win.”
Posted inNonfiction
Best Of 2023: Features
At the time of this writing, Longreads editors have created nearly 650 recommendations in 2023, and just about every one of them can be considered a feature. However, you’ll find that the stories contained herein are features in the classic sense: marriages of deep reporting and indelible prose. Some are light, others emotionally taxing. Their […]
Posted inEditor's Pick
‘A Mass Assassination Factory’: Inside Israel’s Calculated Bombing of Gaza
“Permissive airstrikes on non-military targets and the use of an artificial intelligence system have enabled the Israeli army to carry out its deadliest war on Gaza, a +972 and Local Call investigation reveals.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
How AI Reduces the World to Stereotypes
“Rest of World analyzed 3,000 AI images to see how image generators visualize different countries and cultures.”
Posted inEditor's Pick
What If the Robots Were Very Nice While They Took Over the World?
“First it was chess and Go. Now AI can beat us at Diplomacy, the most human of board games. The way it wins offers hope that maybe AI will be a delight.”