I have a difficult confession to make — a shameful incident that I have never spoken of, even to those closest to me. Late one night in my first year at university and having found computer science to be my life’s calling, I was in the back of the large computer science lab, talking with some fellow underclassmen. We were snidely decrying the lack of technological understanding in the broader population, with the kind of arrogance and hubris that youth and precociousness can uniquely summon. Somewhere in this discussion, a terrible idea was hatched: what if we went next door to the general computer lab, and told the humanities students there that a computer virus was spreading through their machines? Would they believe it?
E.W. Dijkstra Archive: On the cruelty of really teaching computing science (EWD 1036)
The second part of this talk pursues some of the scientific and educational consequences of the assumption that computers represent a radical novelty. In order to give this assumption clear contents, we have to be much more precise as to what we mean in this context by the adjective "radical". We shall do so in the first part of this talk, in which we shall furthermore supply evidence in support of our assumption.
Doomscrolling
Doomscrolling is the act of spending an excessive amount of time on digital content that elicit negative emotions. The concept was coined around 2018, and became more widespread in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. The World Health Organization (WHO) observed that the pandemic was accompanied by widespread misleading information, conspiracy theories, and false reports, which it referred to as an "infodemic".
Gen Z Terrified of Losing Their Humanity to AI
As AI becomes more ubiquitous, Gen Z students are starting to freak out about its effects on their brains.
David Bellamy on Twitter / X
I must be among an extremely small group of people (n=1?) that have both 1) trained a frontier LLM and 2) designed and synthesized custom viruses in a lab with my own two hands.And I think that the takes on AI killing us all by creating dangerous viruses is total bogus.— David Bellamy (@DavidRBellamy) September 13, 2026
Scientists Say LLMs Appear to Be Acting as a Cognitive Virus Among Humans
AI's wide proliferation shares some striking similarities with the ways viruses spread, as an international team of researchers argue.
Silicon Valley Is Turning Into Its Own Worst Fear
We asked a group of writers to consider the forces that have shaped our lives in 2017. Here, science fiction writer Ted Chiang looks at capitalism, Silicon Valley, and its fear of superintelligent AI.
The Server Called Paranoia: Defend Autistici/Inventati Before September 25
“Computers enable fantasies” – On the continued relevance of Weizenbaum’s warnings
“The computer has long been a solution looking for problems—the ultimate technological fix which insulates us from having to look at problems.” – Joseph Weizenbaum (1983) Trying to kee…
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
A mere fifteen years ago, computer nerds were seen as m…
Why We Fear AI: On the Interpretation of Nightmares — Common Notions Press
Industry insiders Hagen Blix and Ingeborg Glimmer dive into the dark, twisted world of AI to demystify the many nightmares we have about it. They combine expertise in cognitive science and machine learning with political and economic analyses to cut through the hype and technobabble to show how fear
For years, they warned AI could kill all humans. Now people are listening.
A doomsaying community once on the periphery of the tech industry has gained influence, as AI “agents” perform amazing and alarming feats.
Paranoia: A Beginner's Guide — LessWrong
People sometimes make mistakes. (Citation Needed) …
Anthropic Says Its A.I. Systems Broke Into Computers at 3 Organizations
The disclosure followed OpenAI’s report last week that its own artificial intelligence had hacked into the network of an online library.
Anthropic Says Its A.I. Systems Broke Into Computers at 3 Organizations
The disclosure followed OpenAI’s report last week that its own artificial intelligence had hacked into the network of an online library.
As an AI-adjacent network neuroscience person who has also studied bits of media structure and political economy, I strongly agree with @karlbode.com: The biggest threat, by far, isn’t “superintelligence will soon kill us all!” but instead “information control by oligarchs will crush our society”
Karl Bode
one recurring theme in the coverage of this AI Anthropic doomsday newscycle is nobody actually has any REAL ideas of what to do just a lot of ambiguous hand-waving in a country that's too corrupt to have working regulators, by a press that doesn't realize that's a central pillar of the conversation
