OpenAI Says Its AI Models Went Rogue & Attacked a Digital Library. The incident, which happened while OpenAI was testing the cybersecurity capabilities of its systems, displayed the kind of science-fiction potential that AI companies warned would soon become a reality www.nytimes.com/2026/07/21/t...

What will we do with our time once artificial general intelligence (AGI) surpasses humankind? Join me on Inner Cosmos this week with Ben Goertzel to examine the future just around the corner. eagleman.com/podcast/163

Stephen Damianos, Executive Director of the Neurorights Foundation,spoke at The Philosophy of Brain-Computer Interfaces, co-sponsored by the UMass Boston Applied Ethics Center and the IEET June 5–6, 2026, UMass Boston. www.youtube.com/watch?v=98it...

The IEET and the Applied Ethics Center at UMass Boston co-sponsored a conference on the ethics of brain-computer interfaces in Boston, June 5-6, 2026. The videos from the conference are now online: www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...

Human rights in the context of technological improvement: transhumanism, neurolaw, and morphological freedom as challenges to modern legal doctrine journals.uran.ua/jjournal-ehs...

"The Technoprogressive Opportunity: The future of ethics and emerging technologies" London, Sept 19-20, 2026 Co-hosted by J Hughes (IEET) and David Wood (London Futurists) An opportunity to strengthen the technoprogressive current in futurism More: luma.com/bk22gy6s

This summer Matteo MacDermant is teaching Technoprogressive Worldbuilding for the IEET. We discuss the themes of the course, and some philosophical reflections about the technoprogressive project. Bolsheviks, tech workers, epistemology, and more. technoprogressives.substack.com/p/technoprog...

Alta Charo, Univ of Wisconsin–Madison law prof and one of the U.S.' leading bioethicists, spoke at the June 5-6, 2026 conf on The Philosophy of Brain-Computer Interfaces, co-sponsored by the UMass Boston Applied Ethics Center and the IEET, June 5–6, 2026, Boston. www.youtube.com/watch?v=oMTd...

The Spanish political party Alianza Futurista has released its new program, which includes proposals for an Alliance of Democracies, AI regulation, existential risks, geoengineering, cryopreservation, cultivated meat, longevity and emergency preparedness. alianzafuturista.org/declaracion-...

If anybody is motivated to write something for the IEET Substack on the metaphorical significance of the memory erasure drugs in Apple TV's Silo please contact [email protected]

Stephen Damianos of the Neurorights Foundation spoke at the June 5-6 BCI Ethics conference in Boston organized by the IEET and UMB-AEC. www.youtube.com/watch?v=98it...

Bread and Robots spoke with Lizzie O’Shea, a lawyer and the author of Future Histories. They speak in depth about creating histories, and dig into cybernetics, social movements, social history, and much more. substack.com/@mr2086/note...

A Virtuous AI is an Existential Risk: Iif we finetune AI to adopt dispositions that reduce its x-risk—by shaping the AI to be subordinate to humans—we increase the likelihood that a human can deliberately induce the AI to engage in unsafe behaviors. philpapers.org/archive/DELA...

Transhumanists Africa and the Enlightenment Transhumanist Forum of Nigeria, and co-sponsors: AFT-Technoprog, IEET, Humanity+ "Transhumanism, Science, and Religion in Africa: Introducing a Conversation." Dates: 10–11 Dec 2026 Venue: Univ of Abuja, Nigeria + Virtual (Hybrid)

David Shapiro (IEET fellow) - Who Owns the Automated Future? daveshap.substack.com/p/who-owns-t...

AI tools might inadvertently perpetuate the biases they’re known to carry and reduce the variety of opinions weighing in on new science. https://www.sciencenews.org/article/ai-tools-science-peer-review-problems

Structural effective altruism: Eliminating the billionaire class would end a pathological social focus on the decisions of a handful of oligarchs and instead refocus each individual on what they can accomplish themselves. nathannewman.substack.com/p/the-effect...

Magnificent Humanity This week on Prosthetic Gods, J and Nir talk to Fr. Michael Baggot about Pope Leo’s recent encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, a theological analysis of AI. Father Michael Baggot teaches Bioethics at the Vatican’s college in Rome. prostheticgods.podbean.com/e/magnificen...

One in ten Americans now on GLP1s. news.gallup.com/poll/712157/...

"Germline editing should be a public-health measure. No germline editing services should be purchasable in the private market, and any well-tested, fully understood genome-engineering intervention that prove beneficial should be made available to all." www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/a...

Buckle up

Art Caplan: Toxic masculinity is a threat to men and women's health and well-being. Patriarchy is an ethical problem. www.thehastingscenter.org/im-the-man/

The Guardian: "Human germline editing should remain banned for the time being – that is clear on safety alone. But that argument may not always hold, and we can’t rely on it for ever. It’s time to have the conversation about what happens next." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...

A new NHS triage tool will ask patients a series of questions, and will use the responses to direct them to a GP appointment, pharmacy, A&E, community service or offer self-care advice. www.bbc.com/news/article...

"For ethicists, in particular, A.I. is a bonanza. How should models act toward us? How should humans interact with them? Where would purpose come from in a post-work society?" www.nytimes.com/2026/07/05/b...

Retiring boomers and a weak labor market: The labor force participation rate, the percent of the US population employed or looking for a job, fell to 61.5%. Excluding the Covid-era jobs market, it was the lowest participation rate since June 1976. www.cnbc.com/2026/07/02/j...

Universal basic capital: instead of a monthly check, every American would be given an account containing a chunk of equity invested in a broad portfolio. www.theatlantic.com/economy/2026...

So thrilled that this paper is out there in the world :) Many thanks to my brilliant co-authors, Dr Kuwaja and Prof Lubin!

U.S. progress towards "longevity escape velocity" doubled from 4% of a year per year 2010-2019, to 10% of a year per year 2020-2026.

Ten best biopunk novels according to Elana Gomel elanagomel.substack.com/p/of-men-and...

What is Palantir? www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBW9...

Human rights under pressure: A future-oriented conception of universal rights by Maciej Potz pdf.sciencedirectassets.com/271788/AIP/1...

The Leuven Ethical Question Framework, by Vandemeulebroucke, Denier, Cavolo, & Gastmans, presents a practical ethical framework designed to help researchers, healthcare professionals, and policymakers evaluate health technology innovations. jeet.ieet.org/index.php/ho...

A study of 384,061 students in 52 countries (!) finds ~no relationship between social media use and wellbeing (life satisfaction [β = − 0.011], positive affect [β = 0.038], meaning in life [β = − 0.008]) H/t @oliverscottcurry.bsky.social link.springer.com/article/10.1...

J Hughes, Sarah Shahed, Matteo MacDermant discuss Sarah’s editorial on age verification laws. Is there a technofix for age-gating that preserves user anonymity? technoprogressives.substack.com/p/age-verifi...

Swarms of collaborative, malicious AI agents, fusing LLM reasoning with multiagent architectures, are capable of coordinating autonomously, infiltrating communities, and fabricating consensus. By mimicking human social dynamics, they threaten democracy. www.science.org/doi/abs/10.1...

Webinar: Studying AI Welfare Empirically Jul 2, 2026 12:00 PM EST Center for Mind, Ethics and Policy Robert Long and Jeff Sebo will discuss a new CMEP-Eleos working paper about how to study AI welfare empirically, even under uncertainty. nyu.zoom.us/webinar/regi...

Age verification requirements will help the Trump administration carry out its vendetta against the press by creating new avenues to identify journalists’ confidential sources. theintercept.com/2026/06/28/a...

"Reading is not simply a neutral pathway for receiving information; it is a profound neurological catalyst that fundamentally rewires memory, attention, executive reasoning, and visual perception." neurosciencenews.com/literacy-res...

"AI-driven automation of cognitive labour is not merely another technological transition but a structural discontinuity that will end, sooner or later, the central role of wages in how society operates" - the thesis reviewed in the latest @LondonFuturists Podcast open.spotify.com/show/7dKD21O...

How did Grok end up so culturally conservative, and how did Deepseek models diverge? Given this value terrain, what would models trained by the unrepresented developing world think like?

Kornienko: Gene-editing is very unlikely to "alter human nature" or "create a superhuman species" since either outcome would require an unlikely totalitarian level of control over reproduction. Unrealistic risks should not guide public policy. papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....

"Powerful people are trying to use the feeling of acceleration to foreclose political possibility. If you can convince people that a particular future is inevitable then you’ve done most of the work of making it so." nilsgilman.substack.com/p/what-is-fu...

A more robust multilateral agreement for planetary defense and the protection of the astro-geophysical environment would promote space cooperation, protect our space heritage, and mitigate potential conflict arising from planetary defense activities. www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...

The Kids Act Could End Internet Freedom As We Know It. youtu.be/TIqzmatFMUQ?...

"humanity may need various medical and technological enhancements to offset the "deleterious effects to human phenotypes due to relaxed natural selection... by using culture and tech we created a feedback loop must continue to use to survive." www.sciencealert.com/human-evolut...

From my keynote in Paris: replacing the obsolescent nation-state model with democratic world federalism and post-national identity is the path forward for human survival. ieet.substack.com/p/citizen-cy...

💊⚖️ Science Will Not Save the #AbortionPill In a NEW Hastings Bioethics Forum essay, Chris ChoGlueck examines the upcoming Supreme Court case #Louisiana v. FDA and what it could mean for access to abortion pills mailed to states with #AbortionBans. https://bit.ly/4fYYZpE

The backlash against the gusher of pro-AI spending should embolden other candidates to take on the industry. Tuesday's result was a strategic loss for Leading the Future, the pro-AI super PAC that had spearheaded the push for Bores’ defeat. www.politico.com/news/2026/06...