OpenAI Proposes A ‘Social Contract’ For The Intelligence Age | NOEMA It fills the vacuum left by an unimaginative political class.

OpenAI is proposing a new policy framework that states “the promise of advanced AI is not just technological progress, but a higher quality of life for all.”

How can this be meaningfully achieved? Noema’s Nathan Gardels weighs in.

Why AI Needs A Sense Of Smell | NOEMA Scent is a vital component of human intelligence. But in our quest to advance artificial intelligence, nobody seems to care about it.

"Smell is a vital though poorly understood component of human intelligence. So why is it that in our quest to advance artificial intelligence, it isn’t more of a priority?"

Philip Maughan explores.

#ai #intelligence

The Moral Authority Of Animals | NOEMA For millennia before we showed up on the scene, social animals — those living in societies and cooperating for survival — had been creating cultures imbued with ethics.

“When we think of political systems, we usually turn to human processes. But some animals model political practices that we could learn from to improve the health of our societies.”

— @jay-griffiths.bsky.social

The Vulnerability Of The Liberal Neutral State | NOEMA We must engage in a clash of values, rather than avoid those with differing views.

“The only way to contend with the shadows & the peril that hang over our democratic life, is to seek a more engaged, vigorous kind of public discourse than the kind to which we have become accustomed.”

—Michael Sandel

#politics #equality #democracy

✨ “The ultimate aim of authoritarian propagandists is often to sow so much doubt and confusion that it leaves people passive and ready to give up their agency to a strongman leader...” #Perspectives #Navigatingchaos #Authoritarianism #Hungary #Synthesis #Propaganda

Here’s How To Stop AI From Manipulating Us | NOEMA We must prevent AI models from learning about human weaknesses by banning certain data from their training sets.

"Tech companies control the options we see. This affects what we choose. At a minimum, we should collectively decide what AI chatbots see, so we can affect what they do.”

—Martin Skladany

Journalism In An Age Of Authoritarianism | NOEMA The media needs to rethink its role in protecting democracy — rather than just chronicling its demise.

“In our ‘post-truth’ age, facts may be jettisoned if they collide with partisan identity. Tribal loyalty often outperforms reality.”

—Peter Pomeranzev

The Progress Paradox | NOEMA Neoliberals long preached that markets and technology reinforce each other, enabling both to progress. In reality, when one develops, the other tends to stagnate.

“When investors & technologists who transform society for the worse are rewarded with indefinite ownership of the infrastructure upon which the transformed society depends, everyone loses but them.”

—Matt Prewitt

Quantum Existentialism | NOEMA How Kierkegaard’s philosophy influenced Niels Bohr’s physics.

“As ‘co-creators of the fabric of reality,’ the world ahead of us is not predetermined but shaped by the choices we make. Yet those choices must be made in the absence of full knowledge of the world; in the uncertainty of an undetermined future that can’t be known.”

#quantumphysics #philosophy

“One of the great ironies of this new machine age is that it seems set to rehabilitate, quite precisely, the value of the traditional ‘liberal arts’ education.”

— @nilsgilman.bsky.social

www.noemamag.com/why-a-libera...

#aiworkplace #liberalarts #ai

My latest piece argues that as LLMs commodify routine cognitive tasks like data manipulation & text-drafting, a surprising implications emerges: namely that a traditional liberal arts education is what provides the skills that will be most valued in this era: www.noemamag.com/why-a-libera....

Resharing an essay I wrote last year.

🇪🇺 “Those who control digital infrastructure control the conditions of possibility for democracy itself.”

IIPP Honorary Professor @francescabria.bsky.social writes about the need for Europe to reclaim its digital sovereignty in her article for @noemamag.com.

✍️ Read more here: buff.ly/N3wTKnH

A Third Path For AI Beyond The US-China Binary | NOEMA What if the future of AI isn’t defined by Washington or Beijing, but by improvisation elsewhere?

"Many view AI geopolitics as a culture war between Silicon Valley’s libertarian individualism versus China’s communitarian authoritarianism. That familiar tableau of cowboy disruptors & state-backed titans... obscures the quieter territorial redrawing that’s occurring.”

— @digitaldang.bsky.social

Limiting Not Just Screen Time, But Screen Space | NOEMA The internet has stopped being a place we visit — it’s now an environment we inhabit.

"I expected connectivity like I expected air."

Laura J. Martin for @noemamag.com: www.noemamag.com/limiting-not...

The Eradication Of Grief | NOEMA The company Orpheus brings loved ones back from the dead. But there is a dark side to their promises.

The company Orpheus wants to bring your loved ones back from the dead. But there is a dark side to their promises, Chris Insana writes in a new fiction piece for Noema.

#ai #aighosts

The Push To Get Invasive Crabs On The Menu | NOEMA For chefs and fishermen in Maine, green crabs’ proliferation along the coast brings both a challenge and an opportunity.

On the Maine coast, an opportunistic invader is transforming both the ecosystem & the economy. Can eating the enemy restore balance? Kirsten Lie-Nielsen explores.

Humanity’s Endgame | NOEMA A new history of societal collapse by an expert in existential risk argues that our globalized society is edging toward the precipice.

“Many of the great men of history, who are often said to have bent society to their will, risk expert Luke Kemp told me, are better thought of as ‘a rollcall of serial killers.’”

— @henrywismayer.bsky.social

The Abundance Movement’s Blind Spot | NOEMA What if Americans care more about the cost of climate disasters than carbon-free energy?

“It is true that reducing emissions is the only route to solving the climate crisis, but these reductions are best delivered as the quiet army inside a Trojan Horse of climate & economic resilience.”

— @brianstonejr.bsky.social

“This wasn’t a miracle of consensus or top-down diktat. It was a triumph of mechanism design: the science of designing rules that align self-interest with the collective good.”
- @hennyge.bsky.social

Iran Could Become Like Egypt, Myanmar or Pakistan | NOEMA In the coming years, the theocratic state may well give way to nationalist military rule.

“The relentless monthlong assault by the U.S. & Israel does not appear to have obliterated Iran’s nuclear assets or its military capacity to fight back… What has been assuredly obliterated is the political space for a reformist opposition from within to ever come to power.”

—Nathan Gardels

#iran

Limiting Not Just Screen Time, But Screen Space | NOEMA The internet has stopped being a place we visit — it’s now an environment we inhabit.

“Many social, historical & economic forces led me to check my work email in the bathroom. Among them is the way we have come to imagine the internet not as a place we go, but as a space we inhabit.”

— @laurajmartin.bsky.social

#internet #onlinelife #disconnect

The Return Of The Moral State | NOEMA Hungary is not just an illiberal state. It is a state with a moral mission.

I spent two months in Hungary, based at a right-wing think tank, interviewing regime insiders and critics to understand a question liberals too often dodge: what if regimes like Orbán’s are driven by a moral project?

My new piece, for @noemamag.com:

www.noemamag.com/the-return-o...

Welcome To The New Warring States | NOEMA Today’s global turbulence has echoes in Chinese history.

“Statecraft is no longer about upholding norms, but about renegotiating leverage.”

—Hui Huang

The Return Of The Moral State | NOEMA Hungary is not just an illiberal state. It is a state with a moral mission.

“When the leader of Hungary says that he is engaged in an anthropological revolution — or, more precisely, a counter-revolution — liberals would be wise to take him seriously, especially as he inspires imitators around the world.”

— @lefebvrealex.bsky.social

#hungary #rightwing #orban

Rescuing Democracy From The Quiet Rule Of AI | NOEMA Our gravest AI risk isn’t runaway superintelligence but our cultural readiness to surrender collective judgment to algorithmic systems.

“The shift to a world with superhuman intelligence demands something different than reactive jumps to impede AI progress; it calls for a deeper rethinking of how power & authority operate.”

—Andrew Sorota

www.noemamag.com/rescuing-dem...

Middle-Power Multilateralism In A Hard Power World | NOEMA A rules-based order for those in between the ‘hyper-scalers and hegemons.’

“Building a rules-based ‘middle power multilateralism’ is the only imperfect alternative to a world order where might makes right.”

—Nathan Gardels

#worldorder #hardpower #multilateralism

What The AI Consciousness Question Conceals | NOEMA In the human-AI arrangement, value lies not inside the machine, not inside the skull, but in the configuration between them.

In the human-AI arrangement, value lies not inside the machine, not inside the skull, but in the configuration between them, Barton Friedland argues.

#ai #aiconsciousness #consciousness

The Gulf World That Air Conditioning Wrought | NOEMA From Saudi Arabia to Qatar, rulers have used modern air conditioning to control landscapes and lives, forgoing traditional methods of keeping cool.

From Saudi Arabia to Qatar, rulers have used modern air conditioning indoors & out to control landscapes & lives, forgoing traditional methods of keeping cool. Should that change? [ @mariannedhe.bsky.social @noemamag.com ] www.noemamag.com/the-gulf-wor...

How Reverse Game Theory Could Solve The Housing Shortage | NOEMA Our hardest problems — from housing shortages to climate retreat to democratic trust and technology — aren’t failures of politics; they’re failures of incentives.

Also in tomorrow's newsletter, a really fascinating item in Noema Magazine @noemamag.com on mechanism design in creating policies that have positive outcomes for those who participate. Transfer of development rights, one of my favorites, is discussed in detail - link.theoverheadwire.com/u9yxb