wired opinion

Given these real and growing risks to human flourishing, there is—just barely—time to be wiser. Looking at this future is like “looking down that railroad track and seeing that little light,” according to seasoned scientist Bob Perry. When…

This year, we’ve seen the introduction of powerful generative AI systems that have the ability to create images and text on demand. At the same time, regulators are on the move. Europe is in the middle of finalizing its AI regulation (the…

Since then, the quest to proliferate larger and larger language models has accelerated, and many of the dangers we warned about, such as outputting hateful text and disinformation en masse, continue to unfold. Just a few days ago, Meta…

Despite the flood of investigative exposés on dataveillance, users in the United States seem more enmeshed than ever in those infrastructures, as if they are responding with a collective shrug—“I know, but all the same.” It’s not just…

The rise of powerful new technology means that humanity must confront the risk of its own demise. The invention of nuclear weaponry, for example, has already shown just how quickly humanity’s destructive power could grow. The atomic bomb…

On a snowy winter day, we were in the library of a charter middle school in Portland, Maine. It was the first of many school visits where we teamed up with teachers to try out classroom approaches for teaching thorny digital topics, from…

The potential gold standard for online content governance in the EU—the Digital Services Act —is now a reality after the European Parliament voted overwhelmingly for the legislation earlier this week. The final hurdle, which is a mere…

In the vision of the “frictionless” city that is held by many in tech, where virtually every city service, human interaction, and consumer experience is to be mediated by an app or digital service that not only cuts out the need to deal…

It is now the middle of March. I am sitting in the basement of a country house near Kyiv. Not my house. I haven't been home for three weeks now, maybe more. The calendar has ceased to be of great importance here.Until a few weeks ago, I was…

I first held a violin in my late forties. Placing it under my chin, I let go an impious expletive, astonished by the instrument’s connection to mammalian evolution. In my ignorance, I had not realized that violinists not only tuck…