941 tacks
Thousands of people are selling their identities to train AI – but at what cost?
Gig AI trainers worldwide are selling moments of their lives, including calls and texts, to AI companies for quick cash.
The Internet is Being Deleted (And You Haven’t Noticed)
Right now, we are witnessing a massive, systematic erasure of digital history. From war crime investigations to grassroots activism and historical archives, the "permanent" web is vanishing. In this episode of Free Speech Friday, Taylor Lorenz breaks down the escalating censorship from Big Tech and governments that is burning our collective digital archive. Documentation of major historical events, war crimes, police violence, videos documenting things like ICE abductions, but also thousands of photos, websites, and archives that play a crucial role in documenting our cultural and political history are being systematically erased from the web.
Tech oligarchs reshape humanity while billionaires of old seem quaint
The rise of tech billionaires, particularly those in the AI sector, has led to a concentration of power and wealth. This group, driven by a belief in technology’s potential to solve humanity’s challenges, is shaping the future of AI and potentially humanity itself. Their vision, however, often overlooks the concerns of the average person and the importance of democratic governance.
AI toys for young children must be more tightly regulated, say researchers
A University of Cambridge study found that AI-powered toys for young children struggle with social and pretend play, misunderstand emotions, and react inappropriately. Researchers are calling for tighter regulation of these toys to ensure psychological safety and limit their ability to affirm friendship and other sensitive areas. Concerns were also raised about the potential erosion of children’s imaginative play abilities and the handling of data collected by these toys.
After the Bondi attack, a deepfaked Guardian video went viral. It won't be the last
A video of Australian federal police commissioner Krissy Barrett claiming four Indian nationals had been arrested, with a Guardian watermark on screen, was in fact a deepfake made from a genuine video of a press conference Barrett had given on 18 December. The video was flagged by online factcheckers, but not before being watched hundreds of thousands of times. As Guardian Australia's technology reporter Josh Taylor explains, these deepfakes are only getting easier to make.
‘I wish I could push ChatGPT off a cliff’: professors scramble to save critical thinking in an age of AI
Professors in the humanities are grappling with the impact of AI on critical thinking and education. They fear AI undermines independent thought, a core goal of higher education, and could lead to a “soulless” form of vocational training. While some universities embrace AI, many professors resist, using creative methods to discourage its use and preserve the value of a traditional liberal arts education.
Should we be boycotting ChatGPT? – podcast
Should we be boycotting ChatGPT? Rutger Bregman discusses why consumers should abandon their ChatGPT accounts. After initially being impressed by artificial intelligence, he is deeply concerned by the direction of a product that is now being used for police recruitment and military planning.
We Didn’t Ask for This Internet
Ragebait, sponcon, A.I. slop — the internet of 2026 makes a lot of us nostalgic for the internet of 10 or 15 years ago. What exactly went wrong here? How did the early promise of the internet get so twisted? And what exactly is wrong here? What kinds of policies could actually make our digital lives meaningfully better? Cory Doctorow and Tim Wu have two different theories of the case, which I thought would be interesting to put in conversation together. Doctorow is a science fiction writer, an activist with the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the author of “Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It.” Wu is a law professor who worked on technology policy in the Biden White House; his latest book is “The Age of Extraction: How Tech Platforms Conquered the Economy and Threaten Our Future Prosperity.”
What Do the People Building AI Believe?
The Atlantic's Galaxy Brain explores the culture of this boom with the writer Jasmine Sun, who’s been chronicling San Francisco’s AI scene. Sun describes what this moment feels like on the ground, including a subculture of massive salaries, and a weird pride in leaning into tech’s strangeness. Together, Warzel and Sun unpack two major factions shaping the industry: the AI “doomers,” and the accelerationists. The conversation also traces Silicon Valley’s rightward drift—the “founder mode” backlash against regulation and employee activism and the rise of “Trump style” provocation-first tech marketing. Finally, Sun and Warzel address the jagged reality of today’s models, which are brilliant at some tasks and weak at others.
Tech Billionaires Want Us Dead
Taylor Lorenz argues that a strand of Silicon Valley ideology treats biological humanity as temporary and sees AI or digital beings as our “successors.” She traces this worldview from early cyber-utopianism through transhumanism, long-termism, and accelerationism, claiming billionaires are funding AI, bunkers, life-extension, and escape plans while accepting human harm as collateral. Her conclusion is that this future is not inevitable: society should regulate big tech, challenge billionaire power, and defend a human-centred technological future.
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