SAN MATEO, CA—After spending the past three decades of his life being totally unable and unwilling to engage in any meaningful way with the world around him, James Parker, a local guy who sucks at being a person, told reporters Thursday that he saw huge potential in AI. “While it’s still in its early phase, artificial intelligence will one day accomplish things that humans could have never even dreamed of doing,” said Parker, who, by all accounts, has never stretched himself to do something he found difficult; has never created anything truly original; and, deep down, has absolutely zero understanding of what makes things good, enjoyable, or rewarding. “Just yesterday, I asked an AI program to write an entire sci-fi novel for me, and [as someone who will die an empty shell of a man who wasted his life doing nothing for the world and, perhaps, should never have been born] I was super impressed. Soon, humans won’t need to do anything at all! Awesome.” At press time, Parker added that as someone whose contributions to society would almost certainly be measured cumulatively as a net loss, he also saw great potential in the future of the metaverse.
Personal Superintelligence
Explore Meta's vision of personal superintelligence, where AI empowers individuals to achieve their goals, create, connect, and lead fulfilling lives. Insights from Mark Zuckerberg on the future of AI and human empowerment.
The Jevons Paradox of AI - Wesley's notes
Why AI can make us more productive but will never save us time
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AI is not superhuman
What metaphor should drive the field of AI research?
Augmented human intelligence goes beyond the AGI mirage
This paper argues that contemporary Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) approaches face significant challenges that make Augmented Human Intelligence (AHI) a more promising and practically beneficial alternative. Drawing on phenomenological insights from Peter-Paul Verbeek’s technological mediation theory and comprehensive empirical evidence from decades of AI development, we argue that current AGI projects encounter recurring difficulties that may stem from attempting to replace rather than enhance human intelligence. Through analysis of mediation theory’s core concepts, systematic examination of recent AI performance data, and comprehensive review of human–AI collaboration studies, we show why augmentation approaches consistently outperform replacement attempts across domains requiring creativity, judgment, and contextual understanding. Prioritizing sophisticated AHI development over AGI pursuit represents not a compromise but a fundamental reorientation toward more effective and ethically sound approaches to artificial intelligence that better serve human flourishing.
A more interesting upside of AI
Does AI provide anything to look forward to, if “super-intelligence” sounds boring?
What AI is Really For - Christopher Butler
After three years of immersion in AI, I have come to a relatively simple conclusion: it’s a useful technology that is very likely overhyped to the
What the hell happened with AGI timelines in 2026?
233. "The Illusion of Thinking" — Thoughts on This Important Paper
This is a fantastic paper. I just love it. tl;dr AI is not human. Anthropomorphization has been bad for AI, LLMs, and Chat. Clippy walked so today's AI could run.
The Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Human Thought
This research paper examines, from a multidimensional perspective (cognitive, social, ethical, and philosophical), how AI is transforming human thought. It highlights a cognitive offloading effect: the externalization of mental functions to AI can reduce intellectual engagement and weaken critical thinking. On the social level, algorithmic personalization creates filter bubbles that limit the diversity of opinions and can lead to the homogenization of thought and polarization. This research also describes the mechanisms of algorithmic manipulation (exploitation of cognitive biases, automated disinformation, etc.) that amplify AI's power of influence. Finally, the question of potential artificial consciousness is discussed, along with its ethical implications. The report as a whole underscores the risks that AI poses to human intellectual autonomy and creativity, while proposing avenues (education, transparency, governance) to align AI development with the interests of humanity.
Good design hasn’t changed with AI — John Pham, SF Compute
Sense-making reconsidered: large language models and the blind spot of embodied cognition
Large Language Models (LLMs) demonstrate a kind of linguistic competence that theories of embodied and enactive cognition have long deemed impossible for systems lacking the meaningful perspective of a living being, i.e., the capacity for sense-making. Facing up to this unexpected technological development requires confronting what I propose to call the “AI dilemma”: either frontier LLMs are capable of sense-making despite lacking biological embodiment, or the kind of linguistic competence they exhibit does not necessarily require sense-making. In their chapter on cognition, Frank, Thompson, and Gleiser (2024) maintain that no AI system comes close to realizing relevance, a position that derives much of its motivation from past practical failures. However, frontier LLMs have effectively overcome Dreyfus’ commonsense knowledge problem, such that their dismissal as categorically mindless risks undermining Frank et al.’s central claim that human cognition is deeply intertwined with lived experience. I therefore argue in favor of the alternative side of the AI dilemma: human-level linguistic competence of LLMs should be recognized as a novel non‑biological form of sense‑making, based on a technologically‑mediated embodiment whose enabling properties are in need of further theoretical analysis. This reorientation invites enactive theory to clarify which aspects of sense-making may be universal and which aspects are specifically contingent on organic life, thereby advancing its conceptual framework in dialogue with contemporary AI.
AI overuse could spark "brain fry," new research finds
The mental strain associated with AI carries "significant costs," researchers find.
Why Centralized AI Is Not Our Inevitable Future
Sam Altman’s vision of a “gentle singularity” where AI gradually transforms society presents an alluring future of abundance and human flourishing. His optimism about AI’s p…
