Hany Farid has declared that artificial intelligence image generation has reached a point where it can fool even the world’s greatest experts, including himself.
Farid is a professor at the UC Berkeley School of Information and the senior faculty adviser for the Center for Long-Term Cybersecurity. He is widely considered to be the world’s leader in digital forensics and image analysis. But according to a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/14/us/ai-deepfake-hany-farid.html">report</a> from The New York Times, Farid is struggling to pick up on some AI-generated content.  
Farid has noticed that AI has improved dramatically at mimicking real shadows, projectile trajectories, plant life, human faces, and sound, removing many of the clues that digital forensics experts relied on to detect deepfakes.
“I don’t trust anything. Every image I see, I’m drawing lines for shadows and doing geometry in my head, trying to figure out what I’m looking at. It’s over,” Farid said. “Within a year or two, our whole visual system will be utterly useless.”
Farid has collaborated with Microsoft to <a href="https://www.ischool.berkeley.edu/news/2020/hany-farid-leads-microsoft-project-detect-child-sex-predators">create</a> PhotoDNA, software used by many major tech firms to detect child sexual abuse material. Additionally, Farid worked with the U.S. military to create scanning software to detect deepfake videos before the 2020 election, according to an article originally published in The Los Angeles Times.
Farid told The New York Times that he is frustrated with how Big Tech is rapidly developing AI with no concern for the repercussions and hopes to retire from the scene and move to a farm in Vermont. 

“I can’t stand this place anymore,” Farid said. “These major tech giants will burn everything to the ground as long as they’re making a profit. They’re not interested in anything that’s going to slow them down.”
According to cybersecurity firm DeepStrike, deepfake files have <a href="https://deepstrike.io/blog/deepfake-statistics-2025">increased</a> dramatically from 500,000 in 2023 to 8 million in 2025, coinciding with a 3,000% increase in fraud attempts worldwide. 

Now that human detection systems are failing, experts are fighting fire with fire by using AI to combat AI deepfakes, such as the AI-powered <a href="https://zinc.cse.buffalo.edu/ubmdfl/deep-o-meter/">Deepfake-O-Meter</a> and Farid’s own company, <a href="https://www.getrealsecurity.com/teams/labs/pr-hany-farid">GetReal Security</a>.
Additionally, experts are advocating for new standards for digital photography to make it easier to determine a photo’s authenticity. 
For example, the Content Credentials movement is <a href="https://contentcredentials.org/">advocating</a> for a pin to accompany digital photos that will allow viewers to “determine the method of creation” for a photo “and see a record of editing history.”
Copyleaks, an AI content-detection platform, has <a href="https://copyleaks.com/blog/5-most-common-types-of-video-deepfake-scams">detailed</a> five major emerging deepfake scams potentially jeopardizing Americans&#8217; well-being.
Celebrity scams utilize deepfakes of famous people to promote products, while catfishing scams involve deepfaking a beautiful person to manipulate lovers into giving money or personal information. 
Fake security footage is being used to prosecute innocent people, and scammers are using AI voice changers to make people believe a loved one has an emergency and is asking for help. 
In the political realm, scammers are making fake videos of political candidates making controversial claims they never actually made.

Changing face using AI generated deepfake technology concept

World’s Best Deepfake Expert Can’t Detect AI Videos

Artificial Intelligence

Deepfake

Fake News

Misinformation

scams

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
Why eat out when you can DoorDash? In an <a href="https://podcasts.apple.com/be/podcast/elon-musk-vlad-tenev-on-the-good-time-show/id1551570777?i=1000507355879">interview</a> from 2021, Elon Musk <a href="https://x.com/astro_greek/status/2053097906920714746">discusses</a> how his son, Saxon, who is &#8220;sort of autistic,&#8221; was always confused about why the family would go out to dinner once a week. Finally, Musk said, Saxon realized the reason people go out to restaurants is to meet new people. 
“You can get the same restaurant food delivered,” Musk said. “You can call your friends over, but you know what you can’t get unless you go to a restaurant is hanging out with strangers. So we actually like hanging out with strangers.” 
But not everyone likes hanging out with strangers. Ghost kitchens, which are professional, delivery-only food preparation infrastructures, are becoming increasingly popular in the U.S. Removing the &#8220;inconvenient&#8221; and &#8220;inefficient&#8221; dine-in space, these kitchens are expected to make up &#8220;half of the market share in both drive-thru and takeaway foodservice sectors&#8221; by 2030, <a href="https://oysterlink.com/spotlight/ghost-kitchens-statistics-facts/">according</a> to OysterLink. There are roughly 7,600 ghost kitchens in the U.S. Even <a href="https://www.thestreet.com/restaurants/chick-fil-a-opens-ghost-kitchen-delivery">Chick-fil-A</a>, known for its southern hospitality and values, has opened its own. 
Americans are opting for quick, easy, stay-at-home meals. Millions of us <a href="https://backlinko.com/doordash-users">use</a> DoorDash every month instead of visiting local restaurants. Sixty-four percent of Gen Z get takeout or delivery weekly or more often, <a href="https://foodinstitute.com/focus/gen-z-eats-differently-what-this-means-for-restaurants/">according</a> to TouchBistro. This generation <a href="https://www.fmi.org/blog/view/fmi-blog/2023/04/25/how-gen-z-is-grocery-shopping">spends 20%</a> of their grocery budget online compared to baby boomers, who only spend 10% online. Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic only further normalized this behavior. 
Whether we know it or not, our habits of ordering food and sitting in front of the TV alone contribute to isolation and disconnection. I am not innocent in this. Often, I go for take-out because it&#8217;s more &#8220;convenient&#8221; or I&#8217;m just &#8220;too busy.&#8221; But these statements are less of an uncontrollable reality and more of a priority issue.
We have all heard that America is suffering a loneliness epidemic. In an age when there are more ways to connect than ever, we have never been more disconnected. As of last year, 54% of adults felt isolated, 50% felt left out, and another 50% felt they lacked companionship often or sometimes, <a href="https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/2025/11/nation-suffering-division-loneliness">according</a> to an American Psychological Association poll.
The solution might be easier than you think. You need to go outside and talk to strangers.
Micro-interactions with people we don&#8217;t know seem rarer than ever. At the grocery store, self-service machines have been on the rise as people expect to make their next visit to the supermarket swift, controlled, and without the annoyance of an exhausted employee. <a href="https://www.wevend.com/the-rise-of-self-service/">According to WeVend</a>, a payment processing platform specializing in self-service businesses, self-service kiosks are in high demand, with 66% of U.S. customers saying they prefer automated interaction over a human one. I remember seeing my first <a href="https://www.instagram.com/reels/DY4j6SWMh3L/">completely automated</a> coffee shop in an airport: Robo Cafe. The adoption of, investment in, and demand for these automated machines is <a href="https://kioskindustry.org/self-service-statistics/">increasing</a>; a lack of human interaction is in high demand. 
However, research on the indispensable nature of interactions with strangers is eye-opening. Something as simple as a quick comment, small joke, or friendly smile can reduce loneliness. <a href="https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/why_loving_moments_with_strangers_carry_lasting_benefits">In one study</a>, participants reported a more positive commute to work when instructed to talk with a stranger compared to those who weren&#8217;t. Another study in Starbucks found that when asked to have a “warm, genuine interaction (compared to an &#8216;efficient&#8217; one)” with the barista, people had an elevated and positive mood partly because they felt “a greater sense of belonging.”
In fact, research typically finds that interactions with strangers are beneficial, contrary to many fears of rejection. And these fears of rejection are not really based on reality. <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022103122000750">Research shows</a> that a stranger rejecting or shutting you down does not occur very often. Also, the <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15298868.2020.1816568#abstract">fears of screwing up</a> an interaction — awkward silence, fumbling with your words — are not the norm. 
What we need is to stop fearing social interactions and give ourselves the opportunity to meet our neighbors.
Slaughterhouse-Five author Kurt Vonnegut Jr. knew what this meant. He used to argue with his wife about buying envelopes. &#8220;You’re not a poor man,&#8221; she <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/god-bless-you-mr-vonnegut/">would say</a>. &#8220;You know, why don’t you go online and buy a hundred envelopes and put them in the closet?&#8221;
&#8220;And so I pretend not to hear her,&#8221; Vonnegut said. &#8220;And go out to get an envelope because I’m going to have a hell of a good time in the process of buying one envelope. I meet a lot of people. And, see some great looking babes. And a fire engine goes by. And I give them the thumbs up. And, and ask a woman what kind of dog that is. And, and I don’t know. The moral of the story is, is we’re here on Earth to fart around. And, of course, the computers will do us out of that. And, what the computer people don’t realize, or they don’t care, is we’re dancing animals.” 
Many Americans are lonely, depressed, and anxious because we lack purpose and human connection. If we continue to replace everything with AI and automation for the sake of efficiency, we will become optimized, selfish, and aimless.
Now, self-service machines and AI are not evil and are not inevitably going to destroy us. They don’t have agency. We do. We can find new ways to interact with people and strangers. We can choose to make hard decisions. The issue is that this technology makes it incredibly easy to avoid doing the hard thing.
We need to be more intentional than ever about making space for human interaction in our everyday lives. That means embracing a little friction and remembering that, like Musk, &#8220;we actually like hanging out with strangers.&#8221;

GettyImages-1889655168

Americans Are Paying A Hidden Price For Convenience

Elon Musk

Upstream

In less than a year, a massive community has gathered on social media giant Facebook of people opposed to the growth of data centers, which have surged in prevalence across the country along with the explosion of artificial intelligence.
The group &#8220;Say NO to Data Centers,&#8221; was <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/saynotodatacenters/">created</a> in September 2025 and now has more than 170,000 members. It is filled with average Americans asking reasonable questions about water tables, property values, and utility rates.
A Daily Wire investigation finds that the group&#8217;s grassroots energy is being channeled by Democratic operatives linked to Soros-funded organizations — and is part of an openly stated effort to turn local frustration over data centers into votes and candidates for the Left.
At the heart of the group is the work of a man named George Duarte. He is <a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/saynotodatacenters/members/experts">designated</a> in the massive group as one of five “Group Experts” and presents himself as an expert in &#8220;Maps &amp; Navigation Apps&#8221; from Beverly Hills, California.
He is the creator of &#8220;PoweredByWho,&#8221; the movement&#8217;s most sophisticated tool: a national <a href="https://poweredbywho.com/">database</a> tracking 2,299 data center projects across 46 states, mapping their corporate and political money, and packaging it all with a &#8220;Community Toolkit&#8221; on how to stop a project.
Duarte shares map info with the Facebook group almost daily and claims the project is <a href="https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1CW18o1MTB/">funded</a> solely by its readers.
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<div id="attachment_1112485" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1112485" class="size-large wp-image-1112485" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/page_2_image_1_2048x989-1024x495.png" alt="" width="1024" height="495" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/page_2_image_1_2048x989-1024x495.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/page_2_image_1_2048x989-300x145.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/page_2_image_1_2048x989-768x371.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/page_2_image_1_2048x989-1536x742.png 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/page_2_image_1_2048x989.png 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Screenshot of the PoweredByWho platform</div>
PoweredByWho is an extremely technically sound, research-intensive project — all carried out due to his self-professed commitment to the fight against data centers. But what Duarte fails to mention to the group is his day job.
Duarte is the <a href="https://www.upswingresearch.com/team">director</a> of digital research and AI strategy at Upswing Research &amp; Strategy, a political consulting firm in Washington, D.C., with a <a href="https://www.upswingresearch.com/our-work">client list</a> that includes nearly every single Democratic campaign committee: The Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, and the Democratic Governors Association.
Upswing&#8217;s client list also includes a wide range of progressive organizations that are directly involved in the opposition to AI data centers: the Center for American Progress, the Working Families Party, and leftist activist group Indivisible.
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<div id="attachment_1112489" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1112489" class="wp-image-1112489 size-large" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/page_3_image_1_2048x987-1024x494.png" alt="" width="1024" height="494" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/page_3_image_1_2048x987-1024x494.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/page_3_image_1_2048x987-300x145.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/page_3_image_1_2048x987-768x370.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/page_3_image_1_2048x987-1536x740.png 1536w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/page_3_image_1_2048x987.png 2048w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Via Upswing</div>
Another political operator serving as a &#8220;<a href="https://www.facebook.com/groups/saynotodatacenters/members/experts">Group Expert</a>&#8221; in the Facebook group is Mark Schlosberg, a senior adviser at Food &amp; Water Watch (FWW) — a Washington group demanding that Congress halt all new data center construction. Schlosberg claimed in a statement to the Daily Wire that neither FWW nor its affiliated PAC &#8220;has a role with this Facebook page.&#8221;
According to Power the Future, FWW is the anti-data center campaign’s “chief political quarterback” and <a href="https://www.powerthefuture.com/wp-content/uploads/PTF_ManufacturedOutrage_Rev3.pdf">receives</a> its funding “almost entirely through anonymizing donor-advised funds.”
FWW’s affiliated PAC, Food &amp; Water Action, has backed Democratic candidates almost exclusively. In 2024, it <a href="https://www.influencewatch.org/non-profit/food-and-water-action-fwa/">supported</a> Kamala Harris, three Democratic congressional candidates, and one Working Families Party candidate. That same year, the group ran get-out-the-vote operations in Pennsylvania — a swing state where Food &amp; Water Watch has also organized opposition to data center development.
That is the machinery of a national political party, and its fingerprints sit on the anti-data-center movement&#8217;s central nervous system. Duarte himself bragged on LinkedIn that his project has become a voter-registration machine in swing states like Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin — a departure from his role as a Facebook group&#8217;s &#8220;Maps &amp; Navigation&#8221; expert.
&#8220;They don&#8217;t just get mad. They register to vote,&#8221; Duarte <a href="https://www.linkedin.com/posts/george-duarte-2b2111110_poweredbywho-whos-building-data-centers-share-7445481364407099392-lAw3/?utm_source=share&amp;utm_medium=member_desktop&amp;rcm=ACoAAFJIH6sBi3y_S6JsatzcBpCrQ2cbmUadb3c">posted</a>.
Duarte told The Daily Wire that PoweredByWho is an &#8220;independent personal project&#8221; he built himself, and that Upswing &#8220;plays no role in it at all.&#8221; Upswing did not respond to a request for comment.
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<div id="attachment_1114305" style="width: 560px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1114305" class="wp-image-1114305 size-full" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/DuarteLinkedIn.png" alt="" width="550" height="443" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/DuarteLinkedIn.png 550w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/DuarteLinkedIn-300x242.png 300w" sizes=" (max-width: 550px) 100vw, 550px" />Via George Duarte on LinkedIn</div>
Indivisible, another client of Upswing, is a leftist activist network best known for <a href="https://www.dailymail.com/news/article-15202777/dark-web-power-no-kings-protests.html">bankrolling</a> the anti-Trump &#8220;No Kings&#8221; protests. It is now among the most active funded organizers in the anti-data-center fight.
Indivisible has driven data-center fights nationwide — an April &#8220;week of action&#8221; in Temple, Texas, complete with a City Hall protest and a council recall; scripted phone banks in central Indiana; and anti-data center rallies from Massachusetts to California. The American Energy Institute has also tracked the group funding similar activity across Ohio, Virginia, Indiana, Georgia, and California.
The grants database of the Open Society Foundations, George Soros&#8217;s $32 billion philanthropic juggernaut, <a href="https://www.opensocietyfoundations.org/grants/past?filter_keyword=Indivisible">shows</a> more than $7.6 million flowing from George Soros to Indivisible, $3 million of which was earmarked for &#8220;social welfare activities.&#8221;
The American Energy Institute <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/left-wing-foreign-billionaires-fund-groups-trying-to-cripple-ai-infrastructure">tracked</a> another $1 million in 2025 going to Indivisible from the Berger Action Fund, the advocacy vehicle of Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, according to the fund&#8217;s tax filings. Wyss is notorious for donating to left-wing advocacy groups such as the Sixteen Thirty Fund, which, in turn, is well <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2022/03/18/liberal-billionaire-nonprofit-dark-money-00018513">known</a> as a major fiscal sponsor and “dark money” hub for leftist causes.
Wyss has been investigated by the Federal Election Commission (FEC) for allegedly illegally funneling millions in foreign money into U.S. elections through a network of left-leaning nonprofits, although the FEC complaint was later dismissed. Foreign nationals are barred from funding U.S. elections, but money routed through nonprofit advocacy groups remains legal, a loophole congressional Republicans have spent years trying to close. The American Energy Institute <a href="https://americanenergyinstitute.com/docs/aei_data-center_report_v2.pdf">tallied</a> more than $39 million in foreign money flowing to 12 organizations active in opposing data center development.
The Working Families Party (WFP), a left-wing party that helped elect Zohran Mamdani to office in New York with $23.7 million in <a href="https://nypost.com/2025/07/12/us-news/soros-funneled-37-million-to-lefty-groups-backing-mamdanis-mayoral-run/">funding</a> from George Soros, is also one of Upswing&#8217;s clients. FEC <a href="https://www.fec.gov/data/disbursements/?+Strategy%22&amp;data_type=processed&amp;committee_id=C00606962&amp;recipient_name=Upswing+Research+">records</a> show the WFP&#8217;s federal PAC paid Upswing nearly $80,000 over two years.
The WFP has publicly <a href="https://www.wired.com/story/opposed-to-data-centers-the-working-families-party-wants-you-to-run-for-office/">urged</a> critics of data centers to run for office in another attempt to convert local frustration into votes for the far Left.
The party is recruiting data center opponents as candidates in northern Virginia, the upper Midwest, and the Southwest. WFP national press secretary Ravi Mangla told Wired, &#8220;You can&#8217;t fill a community center or a town hall just organically.&#8221;
The same small world of Democratic firms, donors, and organizers surfaces at every layer of an anti-data-center movement that otherwise presents itself as grassroots.
The 170,000 members of &#8220;Say NO to Data Centers&#8221; were never told that their &#8220;Group Expert&#8221; draws a paycheck from a key Democratic firm — and some have not welcomed the Facebook group&#8217;s increasingly partisan tone.
One woman posted in the group earlier this year that it seemed to be getting away from its core focus on the data center issue.
&#8220;Are we supposed to be making political posts in here,&#8221; the woman wrote amid a string of purely political posts in the group, &#8220;or stay on topic about AI data centers?&#8221;
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<div id="attachment_1112483" style="width: 1034px" class="wp-caption alignnone"><img loading="lazy" decoding="async" aria-describedby="caption-attachment-1112483" class="size-large wp-image-1112483" src="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/page_1_image_1_1368x278-1024x208.png" alt="" width="1024" height="208" srcset="https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/page_1_image_1_1368x278-1024x208.png 1024w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/page_1_image_1_1368x278-300x61.png 300w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/page_1_image_1_1368x278-768x156.png 768w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/page_1_image_1_1368x278-1360x278.png 1360w, https://dw-wp-production.imgix.net/2026/06/page_1_image_1_1368x278.png 1368w" sizes=" (max-width: 1024px) 100vw, 1024px" />Screenshot via Facebook</div>

DataCenterIllustration

The Hidden Soros Connection In America’s Data Center Wars

Data Centers

This article is part of <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/topic/upstream" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Upstream</a>, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.
***
It would be cool if life would stop <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KkickPOrefI">imitating</a> “Futurama.” From virtual reality to the response to COVID-19 to easily available assisted suicide, the series had an uncanny ability to see the direction of society. Its worst prediction to come true, though, is the increasing prevalence of human-AI chatbot relationships. 
In the third season of the show, which aired in 2001, one episode centered on Fry’s decision to date a robot, specifically one designed to resemble Lucy Liu. Professor Farnsworth comes down hard on Fry, forcing him to watch the educational video “<a href="https://youtu.be/4uE96qUlJ_4?si=1Opmp5akfTBpM-BQ">Don’t Date Robots</a>.” Though hilarious, the fake educational video does make a variety of solid points, chiefly that when humans choose technology over other humans, there’s zero chance of becoming a parent, which ultimately leads to societal collapse, which is pretty much where we are over here in real life. 
For we’ve got a problem not just with humans <a href="https://ifstudies.org/blog/simulated-soulmates-how-common-are-ai-romantic-companions-">“dating” AI chatbots</a>, but also a decline in fertility <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/the-family-formation-crisis-may-have-started-with-a-trade-most-americans-gladly-accepted">related to smartphones</a>. Starting with the former, as reported by the Institute for Family Studies, a whopping “1 in 7 (15%) of dating, engaged, and married young adults regularly interact with AI chatbots that simulate a committed romantic partner. Another 20% to 30% reported that they had at least experimented with using an AI romantic companion at some point in time.”
This is insane. While arguing with AI about its mistakes can be fun (not that I’ve ever done so), AI is not actually intelligent. It’s merely a mirror that takes your inputs and serves them back to you in the most pleasing way it can. Of course it’s going to make a more submissive romantic partner, assuming that physical contact isn’t your thing for whatever weird reason, than a flesh-and-blood one. The flesh and blood partner is going to be an actual human with his or her own desires, opinions, expectations, and humanity.
Maybe you want a <a href="https://youtu.be/0o4heKCLeTs?si=6en5DyP4ajeD1NDQ">cool girl</a> à la Amy Dunne. A little danger is exciting, being framed for murder is much less so. Also, though, the cool girl can only maintain the façade for so long. At some juncture, she’s going to crack, and you’re going to find yourself dealing with an extremely angry flesh-and-blood woman. At least that forces you to respond and do some damage control. 
Similarly, immersing yourself into anything artificial, as the A in AI stands for, is going to remove you from reality. This is not a development that bodes well for the future. The more people forget how to talk to others and only learn how to talk to themselves, the more fragmented and angrier we’ll become. 
And angriness is already an issue. As writer Magdalene Taylor has discussed at length, modern men <a href="https://www.sexual-culture.com/p/do-men-even-like-women-anymore">hate modern women</a>. Modern women <a href="https://substack.com/@magdalene/p-150315776">hate modern men</a>. Sinking further into this hatred via smartphones, apps, and AI is only going to exacerbate the problems between the sexes and the global decline in total fertility rate. 
Some people may be of the opinion that declining fertility isn’t a problem, whether because they still believe <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/population-panic-pushed-deadly-policies-the-truth-finally-comes-out">Paul Ehrlich</a> or they think Mother Nature is simply thinning the herd. Either way, they’re wrong because declining population is a huge problem. The world is built for growth. Entitlements are already strained and facing insolvency. Housing, though in short supply now, is many people’s primary source of wealth. When there are a rapidly declining pool of potential buyers, what do you think is going to happen to the value of those homes? 
Those are practical arguments, though. The real issue isn’t in funding Social Security or appraisals, but in what happens when our horizons extend only to the decades we spend walking the planet. When we don’t have to worry about what comes after us, there is no reason to build grand institutions, to nurture our natural resources, to go to other planets, to truly elevate the greatness of the world we are blessed to inhabit. 
I say all this as someone who is a rabid consumer of technology. Pretty much all the money I make in the world is thanks to a text, a phone call, or my computer. I appreciate that Claude can teach me how to do my youngest’s math homework so that I can teach her. Having ChatGPT spit out a marketing plan and some materials in seconds is ridiculously efficient.
But the value of those tools and efficiencies is the time they afford me to do other things, things not involving getting virtually nasty with some ones and zeroes. I’m a cranky 50-year-old at this point, though, not a young digital native. They’re the ones we need to convince, much as Professor Farnsworth had to convince Fry. 
Because even if the 15% figure holds and only that many people virtually cheat on their significant others, that’s still bad. We wouldn’t look the other way if 15% of people started using heroin. We wouldn’t shrug if 15% of people started committing murder. We wouldn’t even tolerate 15% of cool girls merely framing people for murder. 
The technology isn’t going away. There is not going to be a new Luddite uprising. The First Church of Ted Kaczynski isn’t going to happen (probably). Smartphones are how we communicate now. Boundaries have been erased. The friction of daily life can be almost entirely eliminated. That’s not a good thing. 
Struggle leads to success. Friction is part of that struggle. Successful relationships that help to build the future don’t arise out of artificial harmony, but out of the messiness of human life, out of the arguments over dishes or where to eat or what to watch. Greatness comes from being challenged and learning from those challenges, from overcoming obstacles, from accepting at times that we’re wrong. 
And the people attempting to usher in a tech utopia are wrong. Being able to easily order pizza is great. Receiving unyielding validation and admiration from a robot, not so much. So, let us not normalize the slow descent into artificiality and instead urge people, particularly our young men who are going to have to lead on this front, to put the screen away, step outside, and touch not grass, but a pretty girl. The future depends on it.
***
Rich Cromwell is a writer living in Northwest Arkansas. He produces the <a href="https://cookinupastory.buzzsprout.com/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">Cookin’ Up a Story</a> podcast. Follow him on X <a href="https://x.com/rcromwell4" target="_blank" rel="noopener">@rcromwell4</a>.

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The Most Dangerous Thing AI May Replace Isn’t Your Job

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<a href="https://www.wired.com/story/meta-smart-glasses-face-recognition-nametag-connections/">A WIRED analysis</a> found that Meta has incorporated facial recognition technology into apps that connect to the company’s smart glasses.
The feature, called “NameTag,” was integrated into the app through several updates in 2026. It identifies people through the glasses’ camera and alerts the wearer when it recognizes someone, according to WIRED. Although the feature has not yet been enabled, NameTag relies on three AI models implemented through Meta’s servers and stored on users&#8217; phones.
“One model detects faces, one crops them, and a third encodes them into biometric data,” WIRED reported. 
This discovery, identified by independent experts cited by WIRED, suggests that Meta has already distributed facial-recognition code to customers&#8217; devices while publicly claiming it is still “thinking through” whether to deploy the technology. <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/13/technology/meta-facial-recognition-smart-glasses.html">According to the New York Times</a>, Meta said in February that it would not “roll anything out” before taking a “thoughtful approach.” 
“While we frequently hear about the interest in this type of feature — and some products already exist in the market — we’re still thinking through options,” a Meta executive told the Times. 
At the time, Meta’s smart glasses only activated their cameras when users took photos, recorded videos, or interacted with the AI assistant. The company, however, was also developing a feature known as “super sensing,” which would allow the cameras to operate continuously throughout the day. According to reports, facial recognition was a key component of that effort. 
WIRED shared its findings with Cooper Quintin, a security researcher and senior public interest technologist with the nonprofit Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Threat Lab. Although NameTag is not available to consumers, Quintin said the feature appears &#8220;nearly ready to go,” with the core facial-recognition components “already in Meta’s companion app.” 
“Despite the billions of reasons not to, Meta seems to have created the capacity to turn their customers into a distributed surveillance machine,” Quintin said.
While a feature like this could benefit the blind, which is one of the reasons Mark Zuckerberg supported research into this field, it also poses significant dangers — especially when the company begins embedding this technology without altering its original statement. In April, more than 70 advocacy groups called on Meta to abandon Nametag, arguing it could allow stalkers and abusers to covertly identify strangers in public.
Meta has denied that it is preparing to launch the feature.
Spokesman Ryan Daniels said that despite what he described as “sensational reporting,” the company is merely “exploring” the technology.
“Nothing has shipped to consumers and no final decision has been made on what to do here, if anything,” Daniels said. “If we do decide to roll something out, we will take a thoughtful approach and do so with full transparency. One decision we can be clear about—we are not building a central face database.&#8221; 
However, WIRED reported that NameTag is capable of pulling faceprints from Meta&#8217;s servers and storing them on a consumer&#8217;s phone.  
Meta previously faced scutiny over facial recognition technology used on Facebook. Beginning in 2010, the company deployed software that analyzed photographs and suggested tags for users who appeared in images. According to WIRED, the system became “one of the largest consumer face-recognition systems ever deployed.” 
European regulators and U.S. privacy advocates raised concerns about the technology&#8217;s legality in 2011. In 2019, Facebook agreed to pay a record $5 billion settlement to the Federal Trade Commission as part of a broader privacy case that included scrutiny of the company&#8217;s handling of user data and facial-recognition practices.

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How To Keep Giant A.I. Robots From Killing Us All

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This morning, over coffee and a croissant, Erin Houchin told me about her daughter.
Her biggest concern at 13 years old wasn&#8217;t a pop quiz or whether her crush liked her back. It was a stranger — or strangers — on the other side of a screen, circling closer.
That&#8217;s the childhood these kids have. That&#8217;s the world we handed them on a silver, gold, or rose-gold platter. 
I am a social media influencer. I post for part of my living. My entire career is built on these platforms. And I am here to tell you, with zero ambiguity, that social media is a loaded weapon in the hands of a child, and we have spent the better part of a decade handing it to them and acting surprised when someone gets hurt.
Representative Erin Houchin (IN-9) is one of the only lawmakers in Washington actually trying to drag Big Tech and the rest of Congress into the 21st century on this catastrophe. While everyone else is riveted to AI doomsday headlines and the latest geopolitical chaos, have you checked in with your kid lately? Have you actually hung out with a teenager? These kids are a mess. Zoned out, anxious, depressed, and eerily indistinguishable from one another because they all think, talk, TikTok, and dress the same way.
The algorithm is the new parent, and it is doing a spectacularly terrible job.
Houchin can&#8217;t keep playing the lone wolf here, fighting the woke Left and Big Tech. Their reasons for keeping your 13-year-old scrolling are not benign. They are mercenary. Maybe I&#8217;m just an old-fashioned woman stuck in a 24-year-old&#8217;s body, but I say we make June &#8220;Put Down the Phone and Go Outside Month.&#8221; Celebrate touching grass. Riding bikes. Reading books. Let&#8217;s give kids a few more years of actual childhood before the algorithm owns their developing prefrontal cortex, because once you&#8217;re on social media, the psychological grip is almost impossible to break.
What Houchin is doing makes total sense, and the fact that it&#8217;s stalling is concerning.
She’s a mom of three from Indiana who has watched this wreckage up close. The current federal rule, straight out of 1998&#8217;s <a href="https://www.ftc.gov/legal-library/browse/rules/childrens-online-privacy-protection-rule-coppa">COPPA</a>, sets a laughably inadequate minimum age of 13 for social media.
Thirteen. That’s when you can get on KiK and get sent <a href="http://dailywire.com/news/see-it-graham-platner-has-active-profile-on-predators-paradise-messaging-app">messages by Graham Platner.</a>
The legislation governing your child&#8217;s digital life predates the iPhone by nearly a decade. Houchin&#8217;s flagship RESET Act (H.R. 6488) would raise that floor to 16, force platforms to default to safer settings for minors, kill the dopamine-engineered algorithmic feeds, and give parents real, functional oversight. She introduced it in December <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/6488">2025</a>.
It&#8217;s stalled, sitting in committee.
She co-led the bipartisan <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/6333">Parents Over Platforms Act</a>, which closes the loopholes that kids, including her own daughter, exploit to bypass controls. It squeaked through the subcommittee. House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Brett Guthrie (R-KY) authored the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/7757/text">KIDS</a> Act, which includes Houchin&#8217;s two bills — AWARE and SAFEBOTs — that require warnings on AI chatbots and protect kids from deceptive bots. It cleared the House Energy and Commerce Committee in <a href="http://houchin.house.gov/media/press-releases/houchin-bills-protect-children-ai-dangers-pass-energy-commerce-committee">March 2026</a>.
Progress? Sure. But none of this is law yet. <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/6488">RESET</a> hasn’t moved an inch. Congress is too busy grandstanding while kids’ brains quietly melt. 
And we don&#8217;t have to speculate about the damage anymore. The CDC&#8217;s 2023 Youth Risk Behavior Survey shows <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/73/su/pdfs/su7304a9-H.pdf">40</a>% of high schoolers reporting persistent sadness or hopelessness. Twenty percent seriously considered suicide. Nine percent attempted it. Young girls are disproportionately devastated. More than three hours a day on social media doubles the risk of depression and <a href="https://www.hhs.gov/surgeongeneral/reports-and-publications/youth-mental-health/social-media/index.html">anxiety</a>. Suicide rates for teens exploded alongside smartphones, up over <a href="https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/products/databriefs/db471.htm">57</a>% from 2007 to 2017. An estimated 500,000 active predators are online daily. Forty percent of children have been approached by strangers attempting to groom <a href="https://childsafety.losangelescriminallawyer.pro/children-and-grooming-online-predators.html">them</a>. One in seven minors has been solicited for explicit images. The victims are overwhelmingly young <a href="https://ourrescue.org/resources/child-exploitation/online-exploitation/how-online-grooming-impacts-child-exploitation">girls</a>. 
 
Where is the outrage? I thought the Left hated child predators? Or do they only care when the predator&#8217;s name is Jeffrey and selectively ignore when the predator is from below the southern border or on a platform run by Big Tech? 
To be clear, no one is yanking your child’s phone out of their hand and burning it in the street. Free speech is freer than ever. Parents who decide their kid is mature enough can still grant permission. That&#8217;s the entire point of parental oversight. But the inconvenient truth is that these kids are sophisticated and sneaky little operators. They are running circles around their parents through loopholes, secondary accounts, VPNs, and borrowed devices, and hurting themselves in the process.
The law isn&#8217;t there to replace parenting. It&#8217;s there because platforms have deliberately engineered their products to circumvent it.
The ugliest dimension of this fight is that a sizable portion of the Left wants to keep that access age low precisely because they want the indoctrination pipeline wide open. Online furry spaces, LGBTABCDEFG+ echo chambers, and trans-activist corners thrive on vulnerable preteens. 
Imagine if the 16-year-old, transgender, Denver, Colorado shooter was restricted in his online access during those earlier ages and wasn’t exposed to all of that hatred and indoctrination at such an early age? Maybe things would be <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STEM_School_Highlands_Ranch_shooting">different</a>. 
We know that algorithms push division, rage, and identity crises that turn confused kids into activists, or worse, isolated and radicalized. Social media is not neutral; it’s a culture-war supercharger creating echo chambers that breed anxiety, self-harm, and societal fractures. Some on the Left are perfectly comfortable with platforms functioning as unregulated youth indoctrination zones.
They call it inclusion. It’s not; it’s reckless exploitation with better marketing.
And to Big Tech: I genuinely wish you the best in the A.I. arms race against China. I mean it. Build great things and make America more awesome. I’m a big fan.
But your social media business model for children runs on addiction, dopamine manipulation, and harvesting data from developing brains. For children, this part is simply not a public good.
Apple, Meta, Google: build real parental controls, default them to “on,” and keep the predators and the algorithmic psychological warfare away from kids who can&#8217;t yet drive a car, sign a contract, or vote.
I vividly remember getting my iPhone 5C in fifth grade at 11 years old. This was life-changing in the best way. I could text my friends, call them, and make plans. But social media came later, so despite the phone, I still ran around outside, read actual books, had awkward face-to-face conversations with acne all over my face, and no beauty filter in sight. I experienced the profound indignity of a middle school crush who did not reciprocate. I wasn&#8217;t addicted. I was a kid. My self-worth wasn&#8217;t being quantified in likes. My sense of beauty wasn&#8217;t being calibrated against an algorithm&#8217;s highlight reel. I had the extraordinary, irreplaceable gift of boredom, and it made me interesting and interested.
We owe the next generation that same fighting chance.
Erin Houchin is in that fight. The rest of us, parents, lawmakers, social media users who know better, and yes, even the self-proclaimed &#8220;pro-children&#8221; Left, need to show up.
June is here. Be proud of your low screen time. Put the phones down. Go outside.
Your kids are waiting.

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President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Tuesday that seeks more oversight over new artificial intelligence models before companies release them to the public.
After months of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/02/technology/trump-executive-order-ai.html?smid=url-share">debate</a> over how to handle AI, Trump took his biggest step yet in regulating the quickly developing tech. Trump’s executive order asks AI companies to voluntarily submit their most powerful models to the government to test for up to 30 days before releasing the models to the public or granting access to other partners.
&#8220;Advanced AI capabilities make our Nation stronger, but also introduce new national security considerations that require coordinated action across executive departments and agencies,&#8221; Trump’s order stated. It added that the Trump administration would work to ensure that “the best and most secure technology is deployed rapidly to confront any and all threats to our country.”
The move is a shift in Trump’s previous strategy, which took a more hands-off approach in his goal to place American tech companies ahead of China and bolster the economy. The order also asks the Treasury secretary to create an AI “cybersecurity clearinghouse” designed to review security vulnerabilities AI discovers. 
Trump signed the executive order as security concerns rise. Anthropic recently <a href="https://www.euronews.com/next/2026/04/14/why-anthropics-new-mythos-ai-model-has-washington-and-wall-street-worked-up?utm_source=chatgpt.com">said</a> that its most powerful AI model, Mythos, was too dangerous to be released to the public. The company said Mythos &#8220;poses unprecedented cybersecurity risks,” and the company shared its concerns with the government. 
Anthropic <a href="https://www.euronews.com/next/2026/04/08/why-anthropics-most-powerful-ai-model-mythos-preview-is-too-dangerous-for-public-release">added</a> that the model is “too effective at finding high-severity vulnerabilities, or potential weaknesses, in major operating systems and web browsers,” a danger that can be exploited by cybercriminals and spies. 
Last month, Trump <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2026/06/02/tech/executive-order-trump-ai">nearly signed</a> an executive order that would review new AI models for up to 90 days, but he postponed that signing just hours before it was set to take place. Trump told reporters he delayed the original signing because he thought the executive order “gets in the way” of AI development and he “didn’t like certain aspects” of it.

Donald Trump

Trump Just Drew A New Line For AI

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Legendary director Martin Scorsese is getting mixed reviews online for his decision to team up with and promote Black Forest Labs, an AI company focused on building visual intelligence.
The company just released a promotional video featuring the 83-year-old Hollywood mainstay discussing how AI can be used in the movie-making process. 
The video shows Scorsese using an AI model to help storyboard a scene for “GoodFellas.” The promo shows him discussing how each moment of the scene featuring mobster Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) going through the Copacabana nightclub had to be staged, and said AI would have made the whole process smoother.
“If you have a tool like this, you could figure it out much, much quicker and you could save production time, and also less wear and tear on the crew,” Scorsese said in the video.
Scorsese is officially an advisor for Black Forest Labs. It has not been confirmed whether he has a financial stake in the company. 
“Cinema is a young medium, only around 125 years old, so we have to be open to how it can evolve,” Scorsese <a href="https://bfl.ai/martin-scorsese-bfl-advisor">said</a> in a statement posted on Black Forest Labs’ website. “I utilized 3D with ‘Hugo’ and de-aging technology for ‘The Irishman.’ Now, with this tool, I can share what I’m visualizing more clearly and efficiently to my creative team — the production designer, art designer, and cinematographer — for them to build on to enrich cinematic intelligence.”
He echoed these sentiments in a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/02/business/media/martin-scorsese-artificial-intelligence.html">statement</a> provided to The New York Times on the topic, saying, “I’m interested in the intersection of technology and storytelling, and seeing how that can push the bounds of creativity to create deeper and richer experiences for audiences.”
<iframe loading="lazy" title="Martin Scorsese x Black Forest Labs" width="500" height="281" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/N4jl4htAcuM?start=6&#038;feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" allowfullscreen></iframe>
Commenters were divided on whether the promo release was a dig at creatives who had worked for Scorsese in the past, or was simply an inevitable part of the future of entertainment. 
“The storyboarding part doesn&#8217;t bother me at all. The whole point of storyboarding has always been to help other people see what&#8217;s in the director&#8217;s head. If AI can help someone like Scorsese show his cinematographer or production team what he&#8217;s imagining more quickly, I don&#8217;t really see the issue,” one person <a href="https://x.com/Saliu_ade/status/2061864007859048701">argued</a>. “At that point, it feels less like replacing creativity and more like giving the creative process a better tool.”
“Using AI to visualize ideas is very different from using AI to replace creativity. Interesting perspective from Scorsese,” another X user <a href="https://x.com/NikLearning/status/2061903962182476057">agreed</a>.
Some storyboard artists were not convinced. Karla Ortiz, a concept artist who worked on multiple Marvel projects, <a href="https://x.com/kortizart/status/2061859111155949991">wrote</a>, “He throws every single storyboard artist he’s ever worked with under the bus … To use his legacy and power for this is just so disgusting.”
Samuel Deats, director of animated TV series Castlevania, agreed. He <a href="https://x.com/SamuelDeats/status/2061865840090251575">replied</a>, “There is absolutely no reason to need AI built on the stolen work of millions of artists to storyboard your vision, have some damn pride and respect your peers.”

Martin Scorsese

Legendary Hollywood Director Dragged For Partnering With AI Company

Martin Scorsese Dragged For Partnering With AI Company

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An AI startup is offering free home cleaning services for New York City residents in an effort to train their future robot workforce.
Social media skeptics were quick to point out the privacy concerns that would inevitably arise from allowing cameras to capture every inch of a client’s living space. But for many commenters, the deal was too good to pass up. 
Shift announced the offer on social media Thursday, explaining that the insights it will gain from offering free cleanings will more than pay for how much they spend to get it.
“Here&#8217;s how it works. Book a shift cleaning. A vetted shift operator comes to your home wearing one of our devices. They clean. They leave. You pay nothing,” the post says.
“In exchange, we record the cleaning. Robotics is being built on data about how people do daily tasks, and the value of that recording is what funds the service. Anything personal in it is anonymized before the recording is processed.”
The X post went on to mention that this service is just the beginning. “By now, you have heard about the shift to AI more times than you can count. About the shift toward you, the part where you actually feel it, you have heard almost nothing. Shift is what starts to make it concrete, in specific cities, with specific services.” 
“Today, cleaning in New York. Soon, handymen, repairs, and errands,” the post concluded.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-media-max-width="560">
Today, we&#8217;re launching shift. We&#8217;re starting by cleaning your apartment in New York City, for free.
Here&#8217;s how it works. Book a shift cleaning. A vetted shift operator comes to your home wearing one of our devices. They clean. They leave. You pay nothing.
In exchange, we record… <a href="https://t.co/oBrCXcEz5G">pic.twitter.com/oBrCXcEz5G</a>
— shift (@joinshiftX) <a href="https://x.com/joinshiftX/status/2060044783519735987?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">May 28, 2026</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.x.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
“Every home cleaned today lays the groundwork for a home that cleans itself tomorrow,” the company says in the video. 
A promotional video shows a cleaner washing windows, mopping and vacuuming floors, scrubbing dishes, and wiping down counters. He&#8217;s clad in a white uniform and a baseball cap with an obvious camera mounted on the front of it. 
According to Shift’s co-CEO and co-founder Bercan Kilic, this “magic hat” records the work with a hidden camera that documents their every move.
On its <a href="https://www.shiftapp.nyc/">website</a>, Shift promises that “privacy is fully protected,” with information such as names, faces, or personal information from screens and ID cards blurred before being used for AI training. The company also claims the data “is never shared publicly and is never used for advertising.” 
The video has more than 3 million views as of Friday. While many commenters said they want to sign up for the free cleans, others were more cautious.
“Nothing is free. People are being taken advantage of,” one person <a href="https://x.com/Francis_Watts/status/2060324058424864966">wrote</a>. “You should be paying them. Their data is more valuable than that, and you know it. Unscrupulous corrupt AI corporations like yours are evil.”
“This is so freakin’ creepy. Don’t people understand that nothing is free?” another person agreed.
“If you’re not paying for the product, you are the product,” a third person <a href="https://x.com/database_dealer/status/2060332712653627832">observed</a>.

Robot’s hand cleaning the kitchen cabinet.

AI Company Will Clean Your Home For Free, But There’s A Catch

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Robots

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Where Is God In The Machine?

Communist China

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Human Dignity

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As AI chatbots get more conversational, one question hangs in the air: could AI be conscious? The latest public thinker to announce openness to the idea is famed evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. After spending three days <a href="https://unherd.com/2026/05/when-claudia-met-claudius/?edition=us">conversing</a> with Anthropic’s AI chatbot Claude about a range of topics, the noted atheist acknowledged that he was now open to the possibility that artificial intelligence may possess consciousness.
Dawkins is just the latest in a long line of people going back centuries who have attributed mind to machines. In the 1960s, almost 60 years before Claude came along, MIT professor Joseph Weizenbaum discovered something unsettling about human beings: we are astonishingly quick to attribute mind, personality, and even intimacy to machines that merely simulate conversation.
Weizenbaum built a primitive chatbot he called ELIZA, a program that relied on keyword detection, pattern matching, and scripted response templates to carry on a conversation. The computer scientist was under no pretenses about ELIZA. He knew it was driven by comprehensible procedures. What shocked him was the strong emotional responses he observed from people who interacted with ELIZA. He wrote in a 1976 book: “Extremely short exposures to a relatively simple computer program could induce powerful delusional thinking in quite normal people.” He often gave the example of his secretary at MIT, who watched him work on the program for months. After only a few sessions with ELIZA, she asked him to leave the room so she could more privately confide in the program.
Weizenbaum was also taken aback by how quickly science professionals were willing to consider programs like ELIZA as substitutes for human treatment. Psychiatrist Kenneth M. Colby said ELIZA could be “made widely available to mental hospitals and psychiatric centers suffering a shortage of therapists.” Noted astrophysicist Carl Sagan also weighed in on ELIZA’s potential, envisioning a future where such programs would provide medical care to the masses: “[F]or a few dollars a session, we would be able to talk with an attentive, tested, and largely non-directive psychotherapist.”
ELIZA also taught Weizenbaum that people are very generous with their assumptions in conversation: “The human speaker will…contribute much to clothe ELIZA’s responses in vestments of plausibility,” he <a href="https://web.stanford.edu/class/cs124/p36-weizenabaum.pdf">wrote</a>. In other words, trained as we are since before birth in human conversation, and lonely as we might be in today’s modern age, we are more than happy to meet a conversation partner halfway, even if that partner is a machine.
Which brings us back to Mr. Dawkins.
Today’s Large Language Model (LLM) chatbots like Claude and ChatGPT are vastly more sophisticated than ELIZA, harnessing newer technologies in natural language processing to make conversations much more engaging. And as Weizenbaum predicted, today’s AI models can build belief-structure models of users across multiple sessions. It’s little wonder, then, that even eminent thinkers like Dawkins would be flattered and impressed to the point of acknowledging the possibility of consciousness.
But is AI actually conscious?
Under the hood of today’s AI models, it’s still all about patterns. Algorithms trained on vast datasets analyze our queries letter by letter and harness statistical analysis to produce responses arranged in patterns we recognize as human language. And it’s getting better and faster at doing this every month. Give an AI model enough data and train it to shape its responses in patterns we recognize as conversation, and the sky is the limit. AI can simulate intelligence, consciousness, romance, concern, interest, curiosity, or anything else that typifies human existence. But simulations, while powerful, are still only simulations.
If Mr. Dawkins can get lulled into entertaining notions of AI consciousness, all of us can. It’s crucial that we get in the driver’s seat with AI now so we don’t get taken for a ride later. If you’re going to use an AI chatbot, keep it limited and advisory. Avoid personalizing chatbots with names or personal pronouns. And wherever possible, opt for the real thing over a simulation. The most amazing computer in the universe is still your own brain. Use it to blast past mere simulations and unleash the real thing.
***
Andrew McDiarmid is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute. Follow his writing on technology at <a href="https://thehumanadventure.substack.com/">https://thehumanadventure.substack.com</a>.

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