Incredible story by @agreenberg.bsky.social, both on the scam compound operation and how he navigated a uniquely difficult and dangerous situation for his source. This one should be required reading for journalism ethics classes: www.wired.com/story/he-lea...

Another article by @kashhill.bsky.social about the harms to which LLMs are being tied

I’ll confess, my initial reaction when stories like this started dribbling out was that the folks described must have had some preexisting issue waiting to be set off by something or other. But the more accumulate, the more it seems like… no, it’s the LLMs. www.nytimes.com/2026/01/26/u...

One of many awful stories: “One woman, who had no history of mental illness, asked ChatGPT for advice on a major purchase she had been fretting about. After days of the bot validating her worries, she became convinced that businesses were colluding to have her investigated by the government.”

Fascinating article, conversations w/ medical professionals about AI use in their patients. Takeaways: 1) AI psychosis moving firmly from anecdote to data 2) "They were going to have a breakdown anyway" misunderstands causes of psychotic breaks 3) Chatbot addiction may be a presenting condition

Once again, the government is trying to get you to believe your own eyes are lying to you. This was another murder by ICE, an agency that proves day after day it has no business policing on America’s streets.

The federal government is gunning people down in the streets, lying about what happened and then preventing any independent investigation of the killings

NYT: “.. an American citizen with no criminal record, the city police chief said. A New York Times video analysis shows he was holding a phone, not a gun.” @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/u...

A group of fringe researchers thwarted safeguards at the NIH and gained access to genetic data from 20,000+ children – and they've used it to promote claims that white people are genetically superior. (by Mike McIntire) 🎁🔗 www.nytimes.com/2026/01/24/u...

AI application slop: themarkup.org/hello-world/... Would love to know the breakdown of AI that has saved time versus consumed more of it

The tally is roughly 14 yeses, 15 nos, and a few depends. Also very interesting links to studies that find that reading and listening activate the same parts of the brain, including this one: www.jneurosci.org/content/39/3... Narrow victory for @trevortimm.bsky.social.

Not just Minneapolis, me thinks www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/u...

Another lawsuit against OpenAI drops. This sentiment is a key problem in other realms beyond mental health: "“ChatGPT has all this power and data behind it, and it’s telling me that I’m right, that this is a real thing I’m working on.'" futurism.com/artificial-i...

We're at the "please-come-back emails" stage of development

Donald Trump's AI-generated "Board of Peace" logo is so bad it doesn't even have Greenland on it, the territory he almost took the US to war this week to seize. No, really, look closely:

Musk’s participation in the bikini trend opened the floodgates. Grok went from making 300k images a week to 4.4 million. Read more from me, @dylanfreedman.nytimes.com and @stuartathompson.bsky.social: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/22/t...

Settle a spousal argument: If you have listened to an audiobook, can you say, conversationally, that you have read that book? cc: @trevortimm.bsky.social

This guy seems smart.

Absolutely outrageous that the House is subpoenaing journalist Seth Harp over merely tweeting the name of a high-ranking government official who played a key role in the world's #1 news story. Here's the latest and how you can contact Congress to protest:

There is a tsunami of litigation against the social media companies over their harms to teens. It's a little hard to follow because there are so many suits, but a bellwether case is going to trial this month, and Snap just settled its way out of it: www.nytimes.com/2026/01/20/t...

Took the FTC's remaining two commissioners a year to vote to finalize the agency's settlement with GM over the automaker's selling data about how and where people were driving their cars. www.ftc.gov/news-events/... (I broke the news back in 2024 that GM was doing this.)

This is a powerful and frightening story about an agency that has become unaccountable for its abuses: www.propublica.org/article/vide...

Yes, immigration agents not only took Arnoldo's phone, the 10th grader had to use Find My Phone to locate it — in a vending machine for used electronics, close to an ICE detention center. Read the full story here: www.propublica.org/article/vide...

Speaking of illegally retaining... www.washingtonpost.com/national-sec...

systematically dangerous & reckless ICE and CBP practices were catalogued by Judge Sara Ellis, foreshadowing yesterday's killing. Important post by @chrisgeidner.bsky.social www.lawdork.com/p/ice-agent-...

what you clearly see, CLEARLY, is a driver who is spooked by the agents grabbing her door, takes steps to drive away, and is immediately shot as moves her vehicle *away* from the agents.

“Go inside, they literally just killed someone,” says a woman trying to usher students to safety.

“.. In the last four months alone, immigration officers have fired on at least nine people in five states and Washington, D.C. All of the individuals targeted in those shootings were, like the woman killed on Wednesday, fired on while in their vehicles.” @nytimes.com www.nytimes.com/2026/01/07/u...

A video analysis of the killing of a protestor in Minneapolis. Officers wouldn’t let a bystander physician check her pulse and the masked officer who shot her quickly fled the scene. www.nytimes.com/video/us/100...

The branding so far... www.nytimes.com/2025/12/27/u...

Putting the brand on every possible thing

For some positive news: the effects of congestion pricing in New York City. It has significantly decreased how much time my own commute takes so I'm a big fan. www.nytimes.com/interactive/...

The last year was very hard as my father was dying. It became that much harder when I discovered that AI played a role in amplifying his physical pain, and perhaps hastening the end of his life. It wasn’t easy to write about what happened, but I’ve tried. open.substack.com/pub/buildcog...

And black tablecloths(?) hanging from the beams

If you haven’t already read it, I highly recommend Legacy of Ashes for a history of the U.S. overthrowing other governments. Back when it was covert, rather than a very public Saturday morning surprise www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/188076...

I thought, based on the social media-fication of the @rachelaviv.bsky.social Oliver Sacks piece, that Sacks had invented patients wholesale. But instead it’s what was once seemingly secretly acceptable among highbrow writers: making up quotes and details about people to make them more interesting.

The update we all needed on a story which was stuck in my head all year

Read the original story and was really struck by it at the time (and not, BTW, with disgust.) A interesting and maybe cheerful update:

My last story of the year: an update on the woman who fell in love with ChatGPT. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/22/t...

I do think we might all be better off if chatbots were trained to be anodyne, not friendly. I love Google’s AI Studio in part because it just does what I tell it to do, and is devoid of manufactured charm. www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/t...

One of my deep psycholinguistic concerns about AI chatbots is the use of self-referential language--chatbots using pronouns like "I"/"me"--which subliminally assert a sentient mind ("It says 'I think', therefore, it is"). @kashhill.bsky.social brilliantly unpacks: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/t...

About to go on my first true work-free vacation of 2025 (I hope)! This is one of my final stories for the year, about the extremely humanlike chatbots we've been given and whether they should be that way. Happy holidays, here's a gift article: www.nytimes.com/2025/12/19/t...

Wall Street Journal got an A.I.-run vending machine for their office. Takeaway: Highly entertaining, but financially disastrous to let a generative A.I. chatbot run your business. www.wsj.com/tech/ai/anth...

WOW. @haleaziz.bsky.social with a new scoop: ICE now gets a running list of every person who is going to be taking a domestic flight inside the United States from the TSA and runs it through their database looking for targets. This explains the Babson College student's arrest.

"The order on Thursday, which has sparked broad, bipartisan opposition, is likely to be challenged in court by states and consumer groups on the grounds that only Congress has the authority to override state laws, legal experts said."

why do this in the first place www.semafor.com/article/12/1...

Fake it ‘til you make it mentality is not great for climate change www.wired.com/story/how-th...

Translation of this paragraph from the system card: OpenAI employees were able to sext with this version of ChatGPT. openai.com/index/introd...

"Soelberg told his son that the chatbot, which he named Bobby and talked to on his smartphone, said he was enlightened and had a divine purpose.... OpenAI has refused to release the full chat logs to Soelberg’s heirs or the lawyers representing his estate." www.wsj.com/tech/ai/chat...

Another wrongful death lawsuit filed against OpenAI: www.cbsnews.com/news/open-ai... This time for a woman murdered by her son in Connecticut, whose conversations with ChatGPT were earlier reported by WSJ: www.wsj.com/tech/ai/chat...