William Powers

Jeff Bezos Must Sell the Washington Post Mass layoffs undermine his promises to protect a great American institution.

"In the mirror, Jeff Bezos will see a man who grievously weakened an American institution dedicated to freedom and democracy at a time when those very ideals were under enormous threat."

Spain considers social media ban for under-16s, joining others in Europe Spain's prime minister says that his government plans to ban social media access for children under 16.

Spain plans to ban social media access for children under 16, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez said Tuesday, in a move designed to shield young people from the harms of online content.

Foreign countries are bribing our president to sell out the American people.
 
Trump family businesses made $187 MILLION from this deal, and just months later he gave the UAE some of our most top-secret AI tech.
 
They are selling our national security to the highest bidder.

Move carefully and fix things. Build things that help people, and protect democracy.

Is AI dulling our minds? — Harvard Gazette Experts weigh in on whether tech poses threat to critical thinking, pointing to cautionary tales in use of other cognitive labor tools.

. . . And could those dulled minds explain the unfortunate state of things in general?

news.harvard.edu/gazette/stor...

‘We’re basically pushers’: Court filing alleges staff at social media giants compared their platforms to drugs Meta said the allegations “rely on cherry-picked quotes and misinformed opinions” to present a misleading narrative.

‘We’re basically pushers’: Court filing alleges staff at social media giants compared their platforms to drugs

Michelle, I've so enjoyed following your work. Looking forward to hearing about your next chapter!

Largest study of its kind shows AI assistants misrepresent news content 45% of the time – regardless of language or territory An intensive international study was coordinated by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) and led by the BBC

👀

www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/...

A word of gratitude to the anonymous reviewers, the unsung heroes of science.

We recently had the great fortune to publish in @nature.com. We even made the cover of the issue, with a witty tagline that summarizes the paper: "Cheat Code: Delegating to AI can encourage dishonest behaviour"

🧵 1/n

Paul Simon, born today in 1941.

“It’s a cliché,” he said, “but music really IS the closest we come to a universal language. It crosses borders as effortlessly as a cloud.”

I wrote this essay, which is, in part, about the time I tried to turn a language model into Bartleby the Scrivener.

Andrew Ng: "AI is the new electricity!"

Cory Doctorow: "AI is the asbestos we are shoveling into the walls of our society and our descendants will be digging it out for generations."

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

(pluralistic.net/2025/09/27/e...)

College Students Are Seeking Out Phone-Free Social Connection A campus movement aims to find out.

“Gen Z needs a normal that we’ve never experienced.” The Reconnect Movement has organized phone-free hangouts on college campuses in Florida. Now it’s bringing them to colleges and cities in other parts of the country.

City in Aichi Prefecture passes ordinance capping screen time to two hours There are no penalties for violators, with the city's mayor saying the aim is for residents to see whether they are losing sleep by using smartphones too much.

The city of Toyoake in Aichi Prefecture has become the first municipality in Japan to introduce an ordinance asking all residents to limit their daily leisure-related use of smartphones.

I wrote a response to Thomas Friedman's "magical thinking" on AI here: aiguide.substack.com/p/magical-th...

Google AI search result for “was 2010 fifteen years ago?” returning: “No, 2010 was 14 years ago, not 15 years ago. The current year is 2025, and to find the number of years ago 2010 was, you subtract 2010 from 2025, which equals 14. Current Year: 2025 Past Year: 2010 Years Ago: 2025 - 2010 = 14 years”

Good news about the cutting-edge AI tools from the $3-trillion-dollar company.

The A.I.-Profits Drought and the Lessons of History Like the steam engine, electricity, and computers, generative artificial intelligence could take longer than expected to transform the economy.

An M.I.T. study found that 95% of companies that had invested in A.I. tools were seeing zero return. It jibes with the emerging idea that generative A.I., “in its current incarnation, simply isn’t all it’s been cracked up to be,” johncassidysays.bsky.social writes.

Screencap of headline from linked article, reading: He Had Dangerous Delusions. ChatGPT Admitted It Made Them Worse. OpenAI’s chatbot self-reported it blurred line between fantasy and reality with man on autism spectrum. ‘Stakes are higher’ for vulnerable people, firm says. Above the headline: Technology Artificial Intelligence Family & Tech: Julie Jargon Below: By Julie Jargon Follow | Photographs by Tim Gruber for WSJ July 20, 2025 7:00 am ET

We're going to need journalists to stop talking about synthetic text extruding machines as if they have *thoughts* or *stances* that they are *trying* to *communicate*. ChatGPT can't *admit* anything, nor *self-report*. Gah.

www.wsj.com/tech/ai/chat...

Fleeing One Step Ahead of Fascism The chilling warnings of Europe in the 1930s: "Reality is stronger than all our wishes"

“Democracy tolerated Hitler and helped him take office to destroy democracy. This peaceful death of German democracy is one of the strangest chapters in history. German democracy marched to its grave with eyes wide open, and singing, ‘Beware of Adolf Hitler.’” www.doomsdayscenario.co/p/fleeing-on...

Anthony Grafton · No Cheese Please: The First Bibliophiles The library made possible a new kind of intellectual life. Machiavelli, when he’d been exiled from Florence, described...

‘Humanists knew that they were imitating the ancients when they sat and talked in libraries. But they knew little about what these lost collections looked like or included.’

Anthony Grafton on Renaissance libraries: www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

This headline makes me wonder:
Are social media dying? Or is a new generation of smarter, more human-positive social platforms waiting to be born?

On this date in 1776 the statue of King George III was pulled down in New York City.

Because America didn't want a king who lived above the law.

Google search for “all you can eat buffet near me” Al Overview To find an all-you-can-eat buffet near you, you can use online search engines like Google or Yelp, specifying "all you can eat buffet near me". These searches will typically provide a list of nearby restaurants offering buffet-style dining, including their addresses, contact information, and customer reviews. You can also refine your

The singularity is awesome

Worth a watch:

Head of Signal, Meredith Whittaker, on so-called "agentic AI" and the difference between how it's described in the marketing and what access and control it would actually require to work as advertised.

The latest reason to send a teen to summer camp? No cellphones. Camp rules against screens are providing teenagers with a much-needed break from their phones.

wapo.st/3TzDtv6

ICE agents concealing their faces: Can they really do that? It's not illegal, but paired with high-visibility raids, police masking sows fear and conflict.

Good article on masking and identity concealment by agents on ICE raids (also quotes me, for which thanks). A few bits: /1

A robin made a nest in one of my plant pots right outside my studio. The baby birds are hatching today.

AI's "making stuff up" problem won't go away Companies are making some headway at limiting "hallucinations." The price is slower, costlier AI.

www.axios.com/2025/06/04/f...

America cannot long remain free, nor first among nations, if it becomes the kind of place where universities are dismantled because they don't align politically with the current head of the government.