The Torment Nexus: Analysis and perspective on technology and culture
Like many journalists (I expect) I got an email a little while ago from a startup founder named Ryan Merket, describing his new company: an AI-powered newsroom called RuntimeWire , where instead of just using AI agents for research (as many conventional newsrooms are doing, whether they admit it or
If you aren't a writer or a journalist or someone else who cares deeply about platforms for writing and publishing, this week's newsletter probably isn't going to be that interesting for you. As I put it in a previous Torment Nexus newsletter about Substack
In case you don't follow this sort of thing as closely as some, the headline refers to a recent incident in which two of OpenAI's leading-edge AI models gained unauthorized access to – in other words, hacked – an open-source model known as Hugging
If you read The Atlantic , or you follow a lot of writers on Substack — or virtually any other writing-focused website or form of social media — you will already know what this post is about: The Atlantic published a piece recently entitled The End of Reading , the subtitle
I've written a number of times about what has become conventional wisdom – spread primarily by academics like Jonathan Haidt – that phones and/or social media are evil, and that they cause teenagers in particular to develop anxiety, depression, etc. and therefore should be regulated. Haidt'
As longtime Torment Nexus readers probably know, I have a minor obsession with the topic of artificial intelligence engines and consciousness — in part because such discussions inevitably reveal how little we know about human consciousness, let alone the machine kind. What is consciousness? Where does it reside? How does
I've been writing a lot about artificial intelligence lately, and I wanted to break that cycle by writing about something that's been bugging me for a little while now: namely, the controversy over Microsoft's claim that it has developed a new and improved version
( Note : This is a special edition of The Torment Nexus, dedicated to my friend Om Malik, who passed away due to congestive heart failure at the age of 59. I wrote this on my blog, but I thought some people who subscribe might also be interested. If you aren'
The UK recently passed a new law that effectively bans children under the age of 16 from using most social-media platforms, a move that the UK government notes was based explicitly on Australia's similar law , which was passed in 2024 (Britain's law comes into effect
In a previous edition of this newsletter, I wrote about the launch of Anthropic's newest AI model, code-named Mythos, and how the company said that it was too powerful to be trusted — mostly because of its ability to detect and potentially exploit software vulnerabilities — and
As regular readers will know, I've written a lot about the topic of AI and consciousness (too much for some perhaps!) because I find it fascinating, in much the same way that I find the issue of whether AI is dangerous or not fascinating – something I'
Before I get into this week's post, it occurred to me that some of you might be frustrated at how often I write about AI — things like whether it makes sense to think of AI engines as conscious , whether we should be afraid of it destroying humanity
One of the consistent drumbeats that has accompanied the rise of artificial intelligence, along with "Is it going to kill us?" and "Will it kill us and the planet?" is the idea that AI will lead to an epidemic of job losses, and possibly even the
If you are following the growing artificial intelligence industry at all, you've probably come across some facts and figures about how AI is going to use up all of the country's water, while also using up all the power and causing prices to spike for regular
The memes pretty much write themselves: Richard Dawkins, renowned evolutionary biologist and author of a famous treatise called The God Delusion , wrote an essay at UnHerd recently about how he came to the conclusion that Claude, the AI from Anthropic, is conscious. Writers like Gary Marcus, a cognitive scientist and