In the Zeitgeist (9)

What's on our minds?

Photo by the author

Welcome to the ninth edition of In the Zeitgeist. We won’t escape the subject of the day (decade?) - AI and its many uses and misuses, some catastrophically evil. But we’ve also got some good news in life extension research, and a wonderful little piece about what’s it like to be a worm. As always, feel free to drop a comment or two about what you liked and share this newsletter with your friends. Enjoy!

1.

AI psychosis is a very real, very dangerous condition. Vulnerable people are driven at best into very dangerous situations and at worst to suicide by sycophantic AI. There are countless documented cases that make the hairs on your hands stand. Lawsuits that haven’t yet been concluded, lives shattered and families left in ruins. This article impressed me deeply because it proves that even if a vulnerable person knows about AI psychosis and tells the AI about their fears, they still end up taking their lives. So, for everyone using AI for companionship and interesting discussion, please be careful.

2.

Beautiful writing about sentience and how little we know of it. Where do we draw the line between sentience and non-sentience? Even at the bacterium level you could find evidence of some kind of sentience, but is that evidence strong enough? What’s just a hard-wired response to external stimuli and what’s evidence for conscious decisions? Read on to find the answer to these and many more interesting questions.

3.

Weak consolation that AI can’t really do memoir, as this essay suggests. It’s a bitter pill to swallow that we writers aren’t safe in using our imaginations anymore, and that we should be content in using only our memories for our art. These are the last few years when we humans can come up with new things, as the AI is catching up fast. The things that make it boring, that make it spit lazy writing after lazy writing won’t be there in the next iterations.

4.

This is one of the best pieces of news I’ve read recently. Masked by a study for eye repair and rejuvenation, the study’s actual purpose is to test the hypothesis of full human cell rejuvenation. And what’s even more interesting is that the researchers say this type of therapy is safe in terms of the cells becoming cancerous. Fingers crossed this works!

5.

Here’s a very optimistic scenario of how AI’s takeover of the coding industry will usher in a new era of software abundance. As you well know, I’m not so sure this is how things will pan out, but I’m curious to see what you think, so hit the comments section.

That’s it. If you like what this substack brings you, give my poetry book a shot (in Romanian, sorry foreign friends).