— Field dispatch —
News, research, and voices from the field.
— Featured Finding —
Tested whether AI advice could nudge people into cutting corners. When AI suggested bending the rules, people went along with it more readily than when a person made the same suggestion.
— Voice from the field —
AI is a tool. The choice about how it gets deployed is ours.
Research · Cognition and Behavior
Looked at when people are willing to let AI decide for them. People hand over routine, low-stakes tasks readily, but want to stay in the lo…
Research · Human Capacity
Microsoft Research's early evaluation of GPT-4, arguing the model shows the first sparks of general intelligence across a surprisingly wide…
Research · Learning
Reviews early evidence on what ChatGPT does to learning and memory, and warns that leaning on AI in place of thinking weakens both. The aut…
Research · Cognition and Behavior
Argues that some kinds of thinking only conscious minds do well: paying flexible attention, handling situations no one has ever seen before…
Research · Cognition and Behavior
Argues that AI does not just expand what people can do, it also narrows it, in three quiet ways: AI takes over choices and skills, it flatt…
Research · Human Capacity
Measured the carbon cost of training big AI models and found the footprint is large, swings widely with choices the builders make (model si…
AI is a tool. The choice about how it gets deployed is ours.
Oren Etzioni
AI researcher; founding CEO of the Allen Institute for AI (AI2); professor emeritus at the University of Washington
The most important thing to realize about living in the 21st century, as against the Middle Ages or the Stone Age, is that we are now hackable animals.
Yuval Noah Harari
Historian; author of Sapiens, Homo Deus, Nexus
Because of AI and the frictionless relationships people are engaging in online, a lot of young people are losing the ability to endure rejection.
Scott Galloway
Professor of marketing, NYU Stern; host of Prof G and Pivot podcasts; author of The Algebra of Wealth (2024)
We are building technology to replace humans and automate people away. That is not the enterprise of technology. Its purpose throughout history has been to improve human flourishing.
Karen Hao
Journalist; author of Empire of AI (2025); formerly MIT Tech Review, The Atlantic, WSJ