Went into deep inside AmericaFest 2025. Met some Nick Fuentes fans, Watched Ben Shapiro and Tucker fight, talked to Jewish kids and Christian zionists getting badgered by Groypers and TPUSA chapter leaders about groyper infiltration, etc. www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

“God sculpted the Bay,” he pronounced. Now the Bay is sculpting God. Or at least, a bunch of other 20-somethings in San Francisco think they are. Amazing reporting and writing from @lilashroff.bsky.social: www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

The white-supremacist influencer Nick Fuentes is more powerful than ever and is “laying groundwork to go even bigger,” Ali Breland reports. Read what Breland learned after a marathon viewing of Fuentes’s show:

Has been a tough few months for OpenAI: www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

My feature on Jollibee is out today!!! Read on for a tale about fried chicken, sweet spaghetti, and postcolonial revenge 🇵🇭 www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

A new study asked whether an AI model can influence people’s political inclinations. @matteowong.bsky.social explores what the findings mean for the campaigns of the future:

"36–23 still taunts and tantalizes us, a magical missing score that reminds every Scorigami devotee that what’s possible isn’t preordained. That’s why National 36–23 Day will be such a celebration, if it ever comes." www.theatlantic.com/science/2025...

“he seemed to be suffering under the strain of his belief that the creation of smarter-than-human AI was imminent and that it would almost certainly lead to the end of all human life. He often talked about the possibility that AI could kill his sister, and he seemed to be motivated by this fear.”

Amidst more and more cases of "AI psychosis," I talked to psychiatrists to figure out we do—and more importantly don't—know about how chatbots may be producing or exacerbating severe psychological distress. www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

"Something disastrous happened here, and academics are nearly united in the opinion that the problem is not simply a product of the pandemic." nymag.com/intelligence...

There's an all-out AI arms race afoot between hackers and defenders. In the near term at least, cybercriminals may be coming out ahead: www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

Stellar and essential reporting on the incentives and decisions on ChatGPT www.nytimes.com/2025/11/23/t...

wrote with @matteowong.bsky.social about Elon's ritual humiliation at the hand of his chatbot, Grok. It's hilarious, yes. But it's also a reminder that he's trying to bend his platform/tools to rewrite or warp history (gift link) www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

Bless @sophiegilbert.bsky.social @theatlantic.com: "The past decade has been a gloomy lesson in how limited a proportion of men actually see women as equal human beings...The fish rots from the head. The pig is in the Oval Office." www.theatlantic.com/culture/2025...

A sprawling criminal enterprise is responsible for all of those fake DMV texts, and it has a name: the smishing triad. @matteowong.bsky.social talks to the cybersecurity experts trying to take it down: https://theatln.tc/aQKBYgGA

Of course even those fake toll fee texts are the result of SaaS—that is, Scamming-as-a-Service www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

"The science backing up the idea that race can make someone a good or bad scientist or airline pilot is as solid as the logic behind 'orcs can’t be wizards' or 'a hobbit can never become a great fighter.'" Just an excellent piece

I’m still fighting every day to get the answer to this question and now I have a FORM. Please for the love of God fill out the form (or email your answer to cweaver@theatlantic). I’ll let you know how it all works out in the end!!!! docs.google.com/forms/d/11de...

OpenAI requested the names of anyone who cared for or supervised Adam Raine—whose parents allege, in a lawsuit, killed himself at ChatGPT's encouragement—over the past 5 years, including friends, teachers, school-bus drivers, and “car pool divers" [sic]. www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

OpenAI is facing several high-profile lawsuits—and now the company is going on the offensive. @matteowong.bsky.social reports on the tech giant’s new, aggressive legal strategy:

Hi! Preposterously excited (& tbh nervous in the good but also terrifying way) to say that i'm spinning up a podcast that will expand on all the work i do covering politics/technology/information hell. here's a lil teaser we made - first ep will come out 11/14! www.youtube.com/watch?v=lnDE...

In the end, Andrew Cuomo’s long record was a gift to Zohran Mamdani. “What I don’t have in experience, I make up for in integrity—and what you don’t have in integrity, you could never make up for in experience,” Mamdani told Cuomo in a debate.

Defining and essential from @damonberes.com on how AI is ushering the age of anti-social media: "Although chatbots may be built on the familiar architecture of engagement, they enable something new: They allow you to talk forever to no one other than yourself." www.theatlantic.com/magazine/202...

More essential @ibogost.com on the state of higher education—an incredibly smart, compassionate, and compelling view on the specter of "grade inflation" www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

“We can’t police that whole thing,” Common Crawl said. “It’s not our job. We’re just a bunch of dusty bookshelves.” Meanwhile, CC has accepted hundreds of thousands in donations from AI companies such as OpenAI and Anthropic. And it expressed open antagonism toward the media:

Be sure you get to the kicker in this essential investigation into Common Crawl, the data archive behind the AI boom

Zohran Mamdani argues that “freeze the rent” is not just a way of delivering relief from exorbitant housing costs—it is the only way to get enough voters on board with a growth agenda. Rogé Karma spoke with Mamdani to see if he has a point.

so @matteowong.bsky.social & I wrote on data centers: arguably the most important buildings in the world & are, in a way, holding the economy hostage. Byzantine financial instruments, private equity, depreciating tech, hype, $trillion valuations. it’s all there. an ai crash prob starts here.

Hundreds of billions spent on AI with little to show, a potential $1 trillion IPO without a path to profit, byzantine financial arrangements that, yes, can be sorted in tranches. @cwarzel.bsky.social and I on how the AI boom could come crashing down: www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

"It is a simple sort of arbitrage: If you can convince your ratings agencies and accountants that it’s not debt, and you convince the debt investors that it is debt, then you can raise cheap debt financing without it counting against your pristine credit profile." www.bloomberg.com/opinion/news...

"But what exactly makes Costco Costco?" www.newyorker.com/magazine/202...

Grokipedia is the crown jewel in Elon Musk’s propaganda apparatus. According to Musk’s site, Apartheid wasn’t that bad and the AfD is “preserving German” heritage: www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

Talkie-walkie?! www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

I wrote about why “screen time” is an incoherent concept when you live among a proliferating infinity of screens.

OpenAI just launched an AI-powered web browser that looks, more or less, like every other web browser. @matteowong.bsky.social on what’s really behind the move:

"If Brightline really is the future of rail in the United States, the most important question is obvious: Why are so many people dying?" Such a compassionate, sharp, and captivating story: www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

Hi. I wrote an essay about AI slop: How it feels like an invasive species for the internet. How its boosters describe building a future that’s devoid of craft. How frictionlessness can be nihilistic & how this stuff seems to leach part of our shared humanity out of the world. I hope you'll read it.

We tried the new Live Translation feature that Apple has heavily marketed. It turns out to be optimized for Spanish as spoken in Spain (pop. 49 million) as opposed to Latin America or the Caribbean (663 million), which makes it kind of a disaster to use in the U.S. And that's just one problem. Alas.

I tried Apple's new AirPod Live Translation feature. It told me I was being sold tamales filled with MDMA. www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

www.theatlantic.com/health/2025/... "If the Trump administration’s aim has been to upend American science, [the Harvard School of Public Health] is a prime example of what that looks like."

L.A. announced that it has arrested a suspected arsonist for January's Palisades Fire. But that's changed little for residents, and it hasn't changed how much I miss my loved one who died in the fire. My latest for @theatlantic.com: www.theatlantic.com/science/2025...

I toured NYC’s much reviled Friend AI ads with the startup’s CEO. Felt a lot more like an art installation than a business: www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

The man behind the $1 million AI ad campaign that everyone hates assures us that he loves all of the vandalism, actually. @matteowong.bsky.social

wrote a quick one about the tech companies settling lawsuits with Trump. Yes, it’s cowardice. But it’s also an excuse to behave the way they’ve always wanted to (irresponsibly, with no regard for the consequences of their actions). Which, actually makes them a perfect part of the MAGA coalition

Great stuff coming from Grok www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

"X and Grok are politically and culturally influential tools; Musk seems intent on turning them into not just instruments of the far right but also something like Maxim on steroids." www.theatlantic.com/technology/2...

"You can’t defend all of these opinions at the same time. Each one represents a specific ideological position, and Trumponomics—outside of a basic distrust of trade and fondness for tariffs—is mostly beyond any ideology." www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archiv...

Check out a new central page for The Atlantic's ongoing investigations into the books, videos, and other media fueling the AI boom: AI Watchdog. www.theatlantic.com/category/ai-...

"We can’t say what dogs’ preferences might be under different circumstances. But we do know that they have not chosen all of the intimacies that we impose upon them." go read @rossandersen.bsky.social's latest www.theatlantic.com/science/2025...