The Torment Nexus: Analysis and perspective on technology and culture

Is Atlantic writer Ted Chiang conscious? How do we know?

As regular readers will know, I've written a lot about the topic of AI and consciousness (too much for some perhaps!) because I find it fascinating, in much the same way that I find the issue of whether AI is dangerous or not fascinating – something I've

Have investors in AI companies lost their minds?

Before I get into this week's post, it occurred to me that some of you might be frustrated at how often I write about AI — things like whether it makes sense to think of AI engines as conscious, whether we should be afraid of it destroying humanity as

Will AI destroy jobs or create jobs? Yes

One of the consistent drumbeats that has accompanied the rise of artificial intelligence, along with "Is it going to kill us?" and "Will it kill us and the planet?" is the idea that AI will lead to an epidemic of job losses, and possibly even the

Data center criticism is based on bad science and scare quotes

If you are following the growing artificial intelligence industry at all, you've probably come across some facts and figures about how AI is going to use up all of the country's water, while also using up all the power and causing prices to spike for regular

Has Richard Dawkins lost his mind or has AI gained one?

The memes pretty much write themselves: Richard Dawkins, renowned evolutionary biologist and author of a famous treatise called The God Delusion, wrote an essay at UnHerd recently about how he came to the conclusion that Claude, the AI from Anthropic, is conscious. Writers like Gary Marcus, a cognitive scientist and

Hear me out: AI also does things that are good

I could be wrong, but I feel like this post is going to be similar to the one I wrote recently about crypto stablecoins. I know some readers never got past the headline, because they were busy imagining all the bad things about crypto — the rug pulls and the graft

When the worst person you know makes a good point

In case you aren't terminally online, as the kids say, there's a popular meme that uses a photo of a balding man with a steely gaze and the caption "Heartbreaking: The worst person you know just made a great point" (apparently the man'

The one kind of crypto that might actually be useful

Before I even get started, I know that many of you may have already tuned out. Cryptocurrency? You mean the thing that gave birth to all those stupid NFTs of Bored Apes, and innumerable "rug pulls" where the founder of a coin disappeared with millions? The same thing

Anthropic's new Mythos model: Dangerous or over-hyped?

I find it fascinating whenever Anthropic in particular comes out with either a new AI model or a note about what it has learned about an existing model, because the responses almost always fall into one of two camps: the first is the "Oh my god, we're

Using AI to write isn't always wrong and other heresies

I'm a writer, as some (hopefully most) of you know. I've been a writer and journalist for more than 40 years now. It's one of the few things I really know how to do, and it's about the only way I have

Social media may be bad for you but the remedy could be worse

Meta has been found guilty in two separate but related cases involving the alleged harms of its social platforms in the past couple of weeks. In one, a jury found that Facebook and Instagram harmed a young user with features that were addictive and either caused or exacerbated her mental

Are we having the wrong nightmares about AI?

There are lots of potential nightmares when it comes to artificial intelligence. In a recent Torment Nexus I wrote about how the U.S. government seems hell-bent on using AI to engage in mass surveillance of American citizens (and probably lots of other people as well) and also to