James Gleick

How do you feel about someone setting up an automated process that hammers restaurant-reservation websites to gain an advantage in booking a table? The NY Times thinks this is not only acceptable; it's a "killer task" for AI, worth paying $100/month. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/25/t...

“Conversation is our best tool of seduction. Computers did not arrive at a conversational style on their own.” —@around.com

New book from James Gleick about the history of the telephone. “It gave us the party line, the busy signal, dial tones, wiretapping, the late-night DJ, and the booty call. It magnified the possibilities of government, of business, of friendship, of love.” [bookshop.org]

“Weizenbaum understood ELIZA’s use of the first person to be a lie and warned his colleagues against it; Turkle agrees. “Whenever a program says ‘I,’ it’s a deception,” she writes. “That is the original sin of artificial intimacy.”” www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Remember when American presidents did not negotiate with hostage-takers? Now Trump has openly traded logistical support for Russia's war against Ukraine for the release of one wrongly imprisoned American—and cravenly declared the hostage-taker Putin a "humanitarian."

James Gleick (@around.com) on the duplicitous chatbots

Our 11/5 issue is now online, with Sue Halpern on fascist dorks, Colm Tóibín on La Bola Negra, @juliangewirtz.bsky.social on AI supremacists, Susan Tallman on Vermeer, @around.com on duplicitous chatbots, Adam Thirlwell on Wallace Shawn’s genius, and much more.

It does not say, for example: "We believe the government must act to penalise the most egregious theft of knowledge and creative work in history, or to facilitate commercial redress for those affected"

Are you getting chummy with your new AI friend? Finally, you’ve found someone who understands? Here’s why that’s not good. www.nybooks.com/articles/202...

Crazy gramps keeps posting fake AI-generated videos in which he performs phantasmagoric feats of bravery and strength. This one has a cruel extra component. (Not a word in the @nytimes.com, though.) metro.co.uk/2026/10/14/t...

Soooo get ready for another round of Labour trying to explain how trillion dollar tech companies need special legislative care while creative work is some kind of spurious non-profession, I guess.

question for brooks: what if they are, literally, nazis?

I know I’ve posted this before, but it still makes me giggle.

The president of the United States fabricated a nonexistent cease-fire between Russia and Ukraine and announced it on his social media platform. The lie was immediately exposed: Ukraine denied it and Russia struck a Kharkiv power plant. Shouldn't that be the lede? www.nytimes.com/2026/10/11/w...

Keeping poison out of the food supply used to be something everyone favored. www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026...

This Onion article was only written in April.

For @wired.com, I spoke with workers about the quiet push to experiment with AI tools from book publishing executives at the Big Five. www.wired.com/story/book-p...

Agent of a Foreign Power emptywheel.net/2026/10/10/a...

It sounds "super crazy" AND it sounds like securities fraud. A two-fer.

What the United States has become. www.theguardian.com/us-news/live...

J. D. Vance is going after me hard.

Whether it’s Obama saying “yes we can” or Donald Trump say “we’re gonna shove it up their ass” both presidents adopted divisive slogans.

One identifier of a failed state: other nations conduct diplomacy through bribes to the ruling family. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/03/u...

This identification of Natalie Harp is a nice touch. www.nytimes.com/2026/10/02/u...

Question: “What's the role of the writer in an AI-mediated world?” For a professional writer's perspective on AI, I don't think you can do better than George Saunders in this interview: on.substack.com/p/model-beha...   (Hint: "To not let AI mediate his world.")

I decided not to tie down a construction crane before a windstorm. It went rogue, smashing buildings with a wrecking ball…

Journalists have fallen in love with the expression "went rogue." It's not appropriate. OpenAI is recklessly releasing malware: software intentionally designed to gain unauthorized access to computer systems. Show us the actual instructions and prompts. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malware

“Everything that ever happened happens at equinox.” —Richard Powers, “The Gold Bug Variations”

In the government of the United States as now constituted, all officials and functionaries are routinely required to pose standing behind the seated tyrant to show obeisance and make him look important. Newspapers publish these photos without comment, as if it were normal.

True fact: Until last year, the Kennedy Center was one of the world's most treasured and productive centers for the performing arts. Now it's dead. Its entrance is shrouded in tarpaulins that serve one purpose: to conceal the removal of Donald Trump’s name. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/15/a...

In fairness, solving the first problem will also take care of the second. mastodon.social/@fak3r/11727...

It's rare for a single person to throw the whole world into crisis, and his name doesn't even appear in this article. www.nytimes.com/2026/09/15/w...

Did anyone else first see this on Clarissa Explains It All and pined over it the rest of their childhood

James Shapiro in conversation with the actors bringing The Winter’s Tale to Central Park

Superb assessment of Hawking by @philipcball.bsky.social. Thoughtful and measured.