A writer gets flagged by an AI detection tool for prose he wrote entirely by hand — and the tool gives wildly different results depending on whether he adds or deletes a few sentences (The New York Times). Meanwhile, a separate argument is building that AI might actually be better than human experts at attributing Old Master paintings, because machines don’t carry the biases and financial incentives that humans do (Aeon). And high schoolers report they can’t think of a single assignment AI can’t do for them (The Atlantic).
Three stories, three sectors, one uncomfortable question: if we can’t reliably tell human from machine — in publishing, in art, in education — what exactly are we measuring?
Elsewhere, closing arguments are underway in the Live Nation antitrust case (The New York Times). Hip-hop pioneer Afrika Bambaataa has died at 68 (NPR). And Andre Malraux — Nobel nominee, WWII resistance fighter, de Gaulle’s culture minister — turns out to have started his career trying to steal Cambodian statuary. He was terrible at it (Smithsonian Magazine).
All of our stories below.
