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OopsGPT

Whenever AI companies present a vision for the role of artificial intelligence in the future of searching the internet, they tend to underscore the same points: instantaneous summaries of relevant information; ready-made lists tailored to a…

25/07/2024

Good News and Bad News About America’s Kids

The yawning gap between the mobility of white children and Black children growing up in low-income families has narrowed sharply, according to a major new study released today, based on tens of millions of anonymized census and tax records. Yet the…

25/07/2024

Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Formula for Happiness

The Russian writer’s work might not be everyone’s idea of lightness and joy. But look within and you shall find.

25/07/2024

Silicon Valley’s ‘Audacity Crisis’

Two years ago, OpenAI released the public beta of DALL-E 2, an image-generation tool that immediately signified that we’d entered a new technological era. Trained off a huge body of data, DALL-E 2 produced unsettlingly good, delightful, and…

24/07/2024

There Is Now an Alternative to Fluoride

For as long as I can remember, I have bought into the gospel of fluoride, believing that my teeth would surely rot out of my head without its protection. So it felt a little bit illicit, recently, when I purchased a box of German fluoride-free kids’…

23/07/2024

AI Needs a Speed Limit

The first concert I bought tickets to after the pandemic subsided was a performance of the British singer-songwriter Birdy, held last April in Belgium. I’ve listened to Birdy more than to any other artist; her voice has pulled me through the hardest…

22/07/2024

The CrowdStrike Failure Was a Warning

Crucial systems across the world collapsed on Friday, triggered by one mistake in a single company. The CrowdStrike outage hit banks, airlines, and health-care systems. It may end up being the worst information-technology disaster in history.

21/07/2024

The Urban Doom Loop Could Still Happen

“It’s another truly amazing gold rush!” Marc Benioff posted on X in September 2023. The founder and CEO of Salesforce was celebrating San Francisco’s AI-fueled revival, touting a report that pegged demand for new office space in the city at nearly 1…

20/07/2024

Why Our Technological Systems Keep Failing

It happened again: yet another cascading failure of technology. In recent years we’ve had internet blackouts, aviation-system debacles, and now a widespread outage due to an issue affecting Microsoft systems, which has grounded flights and disrupted…

19/07/2024

Animals Name Themselves. Do They Know Themselves?

Elephants use calls that identify them as individuals. So do dolphins, bats, and a growing list of species.

18/07/2024

Why You Should Trust Your Gut

Careful, deliberate reasoning can get you only so far in good decision making. You also need to know how to listen to your feelings.

18/07/2024