Like a prism, AI will reveal the civilizational differences between China & the U.S., making visible the invisible within each society, Jacob Dreyer writes.
#ai #airevolution #china #us
“A wealth tax on the super-rich & ‘distributive justice’ for the less well-off are certainly front-&-center issues in today’s roiling politics across the Western democracies. But what stirs passions even more is the struggle for social recognition, esteem, prestige, honor & respect.”
#equality
What we're reading this week: pieces from @thepointmag.bsky.social @lithub.com.web.brid.gy @chronicle.com @noemamag.com @aeon.co @artforum.com @commonweal.bsky.social and more! pghrev.com/what-were-re...
“This year’s Intervision Song Contest is a soft power play to drive existing wedges in the global order deeper, while proving to the West that its attempts to isolate Russia have been in vain.”
—Lily Lynch
My latest piece in Noema on the hidden costs of agentic AI: humans recruited to sense the physical world on an agent's behalf, potentially without their consent. We're all sensors.
“We like to imagine AI hunting for us, going out into the digital world to retrieve facts, schedule meetings & optimize our lives. But a reversal is underway. We are becoming the gatherers: collecting the offline signals our agents need to continue the hunt.”
— @umangsbhatt.bsky.social
#aiagents
“A standing forest is worth more than a pile of felled trees — something we have started to realize only recently.”
—Tong Wu
www.noemamag.com/investing-in...
“For every Iranian in that nation of 90 million celebrating their liberation from the tyranny of Ayatollah Khamenei, there is another for whom national sovereignty & not living under the imperial mandate of others is sacred.”
—Nathan Gardels
#iran
Achieving planetary salutogenesis is very centrally about finding a homeostatic balance with the microbes upon which we depend (and of which we are, in a profound sense, merely an extension).
In 2025, I learned something surprising: scientists were starting to freeze samples of threatened microbial ecosystems in the name of conservation.
For @noemamag.com I explored how this is part of the emerging idea of microbial conservation — a practice scientist say we need before it's too late
What can karaoke nights at a strip-mall biker bar in small-town Texas teach us about democracy? @lisabubert.bsky.social explores.
www.noemamag.com/the-healing-...
“AI sovereignty, as it currently plays out outside of the U.S.-China vacuum, is not a banner‐waving claim to territorial control; rather, it manifests itself as the quiet right to decide what counts as knowledge & how that knowledge shows up in the world.”
— @digitaldang.bsky.social
“Our tendency to anthropomorphize AI might be hardwired into our brains. Instead of fighting it, we should embrace it."
—Phil Nolan
#aiagent #ai
www.noemamag.com/embracing-a-...
“Many of the planet’s microbiomes are under serious threat, with untold numbers of species & ecosystems flickering silently out of existence.”
— @moiradonovan.bsky.social
#microbes #microbiome #conservation #environment
“I tried to fix my face to disguise the horror at the prospect of potentially having to consume a worm or ant egg or beetle larva, instead opting to outwardly display an appreciation for the local culture.”
—Rebecca Root
When Moltbook emerged as an overnight sensation last month as a Reddit-like platform for AI agents, it revealed our instinctive need to anthropomorphize AI.
But whether agents have a mind of their own isn’t what matters at this stage, Ben Bariach argues.
#moltbook #aiagent #ai
From @noemamag.com: Stunning photographs and a visit with Thinlay Nurboo, one of the last people keeping up the traditional way of life of Himalayan yak herders in the face of climate change and modernity. www.noemamag.com/the-last-yak...
"Unlike a supine Congress or weaker nations with an asymmetrical trade relationship with the U.S., the climate will not bend to President Trump’s will to power. Declaring climate change a hoax won’t make it go away.”
The danger of superhuman AI is not what you think. This essay in @noemamag.com by @shannonvallor.bsky.social is brilliant. Well worth a read. www.noemamag.com/the-danger-o...
“Climate change may not pose an immediate danger to the lives of most Americans, but it is starting to chip away at our economic well-being.”
—Brian Stone Jr.
#abundanceagenda #climatecrisis #greentransition
“The stark cognitive dissonance between how people feel about social media & how they use it is one sign that we have entered a new era in our relationship with these platforms.”
— @mikesmariani.bsky.social
www.noemamag.com/how-we-becam...
“Trump’s trade policy bypasses multilateralism, instead compelling each country to negotiate bilaterally — on America’s terms. In doing so, Trump is not merely reacting to a broken global order. He is forcing others into an entirely new one.”
—Hui Huang
#tariffs
www.noemamag.com/welcome-to-t...
“It is the energy dinosaurs, not what U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio calls ‘the climate cult,’ that are stranding America on the wrong side of history as the rest of the world moves on.”
—Nathan Gardels
#endangermentfinding #trump #climate
“The Tres Hombres has no engine, only sails. It represents a bold experiment on the fringes of the international shipping industry, which generates tens of billions of euros in annual profits & 3% of anthropogenic global output of greenhouse gases.”
—Julian Sayarer
#shipping #sailing #emissions
“Chemical systems that do not meet our criteria for what it means to be ‘alive’ exhibit a surprising array of behaviors we usually only attribute to things we think of as living.”
— @ConorFeehly.bsky.social
“Think of satellites, soil probes, buoys & bioacoustics as ‘nerve endings’ that take in information, the ‘reflexes’ are machine forecasts that fire on patterns at speed, & the ‘cortex’ is human intuition, integrating senses to understand what matters & why.”
—Rimma Boshernitsan
#planetary #ai
Our gravest AI risk isn't runaway superintelligence but our cultural readiness to surrender collective judgment to algorithmic systems, Andrew Sorota argues.
www.noemamag.com/rescuing-dem...
We are starting to witness tantalizing glimpses of the net good that can be achieved via genetic editing. How far will we allow it to go?
Aryn Baker explores.
Europe needs to stop pretending it's a neutral market in a world where digital infrastructure is geopolitical, @francescabria.bsky.social writes. It should act like what it is: a political project with a democratic mission.
www.noemamag.com/reclaiming-e...
