NOEMA

The Achilles heel of consumer democracies is that there is precious little constituency for the future in the present. All the feedback signals — in politics, culture and the market — are geared to short-term gratification. In each case, the incentives of the system deliver what the most influential demographic wants, and when they want it, which is now.

From fast f...

HAPPISBURGH, England — Off the coast of Norfolk on edge of the North Sea, the ocean can seem calm, but the waters are deceptive. Beneath the marbled brown lie sand banks and submerged mountains waiting to ensnare unsuspecting ships. Happisburgh (pronounced Hays-burro) is a small, pretty town, its narrow roads lined by houses with walls made of flint pressed into mortar. The b...

Earlier this year, a university decided to audit the effectiveness of its new AI system designed to help answer student questions. So, university officials hired me, an AI auditor, to come take a look. During my review, I discovered that the AI agent, which was supposed to handle only general questions about the academic calendar and organizational matters, had started openin...

From Silicon Valley to the Vatican, across kitchen tables and in the halls of power, the world is astir over the question of whether humans will be able to control the AIs we’ve created. But that begs the question: What does it mean to be “human”?

One place to start sorting this all out is what Confucian philosophy calls “rectification” — naming things for what...

Someone recently built a digital whip to make Claude work faster. The tool, aptly named BadClaude, sits in your system tray and lets you drag an animated whip across the AI’s window; each crack, sound eff...