IDEAS

When AI Transfers Into The Physical World

“With a world model, you give it a visual state of the world, an image, and it will then predict the next visual state of the world.” These 3D generations can be used as digital training grounds. “They’re simulations, but they look and feel real.” - Wired

When Writers Lose Confidence In Free Speech

If democracy is the political system that allows the fullest human flourishing, the novel is the literary form that most fully cultivates our understanding of human possibility and tragedy and endurance. - The Atlantic

A Long-Lost, Supposed Destroyed, Handwritten Draft Of MLK’s ‘I Have A Dream’ Speech Has Emerged

"Like the typed version, it does not include the words 'I have a dream,' part of the ringing second half of the speech that King famously improvised." - The New York Times

Canada Has New Tax Relief For The Arts And Artists

It's not 100 percent clear who, exactly, will benefit. "There's little to no way to know whether, for example, a violin teacher or a filmmaker is more likely to be approved." - CBC

True Crime Podcasts Are Known For Exploiting Victims. Can A Famous Survivor Host Make A Difference?

Elizabeth Smart: "I want this to be an empowering experience for them. I want them to feel pride in sharing their story." - Slate

In A State That Does Not Fund Public Education Well, Artists Band Together To Bring The Arts To Rural Schools

"The work could especially help the approximately 100 districts in the state where some, if not all, schools are only offering classes Monday through Thursday, primarily because of funding restrictions." - Oregon ArtsWatch

AI May Be Changing The Ways People Think

Some psychiatrists and philosophers interested in AI-human relationships suspect that AI psychosis may just be the most visible example of a much broader phenomenon: the subtle reshaping of ordinary human belief by conversational AI. - Big Think

Our Primal Need To Be Needed

We have a real need to be needed. And yet many forces—thinking machines, aging, economic and social dislocation—appear to be making us feel redundant. Are we building a world in which no one is particularly necessary? Do we already live in such a world? - The New Yorker

Defining The Artificial State

We have not a single piece of meaningful legislation in the United States Congress about artificial intelligence. We have essentially nothing about social media. This is something that we’re now battling out in the courts.  - The Walrus

The Telephone’s Role In Changing Intimacy

This may strike you as a little paranoid. The rise of the telephone, in the past century and a half—from the rotary diallers at home and the boxes in the street to the smartphones in every pocket—is associated with a change that, broadly speaking, we consider positive. - The New Yorker

Physical Witness Becomes More Important In The Age Of AI

For a time, the photograph or moving image acquired its own evidential authority: seeing something recorded was, with reasonable caveats, grounds for accepting that an event had occurred. - The Conversation

Naming That Sense Of Civic Disconnect Of Values

How do we give shape to this disquiet? We might call it fatigue, burnout, or ‘just needing a break from the world’, but often it’s grief – mourning for a faith we once had in fellow citizens to recognise a certain decency or sense of fairness. It isn’t partisan; it’s human, and it has a name. - Psyche

We Need To Reconsider The Notion Of Self

The empty-self metaphor has inspired a large following. These followers embrace an optimistic view in which human foibles can be readily vanquished through systematic manipulation of social environment. However alluring it may be, we suggest it is time to replace this Panglossian view with one that acknowledges the importance of enduring psychological structures. - Psyche

Is It Time For A “Great Books” Revival?

What we are trying to do is not just help ground students—the large majority of them scientists and engineers in training—in a humanistic research program, but to identify irreplaceable ideas during a time of accelerated change. - The Atlantic

Why Culture Seems So Generic Now

“What we see in front of us used to be culturally diverse. Now it is culturally generic. Most of what we see is the big chains we see everywhere,” she said. “It creates a sense of placelessness. We could be anywhere.” - The New York Times

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