AI-powered Hacking

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In just the past several weeks, Google disclosed that hackers had used AI-powered malware in an active cyberattack, and Anthropic reported that its models had been used by Chinese state-backed actors to orchestrate a large-scale espionage operation with minimal human intervention. The greatest challenges facing the United States do not come from overregulation but from deploying ever more powerful AI systems without minimum requirements for safety and transparency. - Chuck Hagel writing in The Atlantic

AI Definitions: Circularity

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Circularity – As AI companies invest in each other, money flows in a circular fashion, from one company to another and then back again. In effect, they prop up one another’s finances, in a similar fashion to what was known as “round-tripping” during the dot-com years. The result is an inflated performance without creating profits. The hope is that this will change over time, while larger concern is that demand for AI’s new products might never catch up with the capacity the industry is building.

More AI definitions

All-or-nothing thinking

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I spend days at a time in bed, staring at the ceiling and thinking of all the things I could be doing but can’t because I know I would do them imperfectly. I lose countless hours to inner monologues filled with self-hatred and all-or-nothing thinking. I don’t read anything, instead preferring to slowly crush myself with the existential weight of knowing that I will never be able to read all the things.

For a very long time, I thought that I did this because I was lazy. I figured that if I just worked a little harder, tried a little more, then I would be able to accomplish the things I set out to do. Failing to do them was a failure of my character. It was because I was a bad person, or at least bad at being a person.

I told myself that I had to get my act together; I had to do all of these things so that I could prove I wasn’t the worthless piece of garbage I thought I was. When I inevitably cracked under that pressure, I took it as proof that I was a worthless piece of garbage.

If all of this sounds repetitive, that’s because it is. It’s a vicious, repetitive, monotonous cycle. It moves at breakneck speed, but also not at all. Experiencing it is the most damning case against perfectionism I have ever come across. Expecting perfection only leaves you with two options: do everything right on the very first try, or don’t even bother. Which is actually only one option, since 9 times out of 10, human beings don't do things right on the first try.

Jenni Berrett writing in Ravishly

Imaginary Friends

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There's a little bit of evidence that adults who are novelists or musicians, for example, tend to remember the imaginary friends they had when they were children. It's as if they are staying in touch with those childhood abilities in a way that most of us don't. Successful creative adults seem to combine the wide-ranging exploration and openness we see in children with the focus and discipline we see in adults.

Alison Gopnik, The Philosophical Baby

Sometimes Experts can't tell AI Writing from Human Writing

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It’s become common for writers to mock AI’s stilted, wooden, and em-dash-heavy writing style. But with some gentle coaxing, AI is much better at writing than professional writers want to admit. In one 2025 study, three top AI models were pitted against MFA-trained writers. In initial tests, expert readers clearly preferred the human writing. But once researchers fine-tuned ChatGPT on an individual author’s full body of work, the results flipped. Suddenly, experts preferred the AI’s writing and often couldn’t tell whether it came from a human or a machine. – Derek Thompson

Extraordinary claims (require extraordinary evidence)

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For some people, the less likely an explanation, the more likely they are to believe it. Take flat-Earth believers. Their claim rests on the idea that all the pilots, astronomers, geologists, physicists, and GPS engineers in the world are intentionally coordinating to mislead the public about the shape of the planet. From a prior odds perspective, the likelihood of a plot so enormous and intricate coming together out of all other conceivable possibilities is vanishingly small. But bizarrely, any demonstration of counterevidence, no matter how strong, just seems to cement their worldview further.

Liv Boeree writing in Vox

16 Things People are Trying to Get AI to Do

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17 Articles about AI & the Military

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An AI Plays Civic Watchdog

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CalMatters this year launched a new feature that takes this kind of civic watchdog function a big step further. Its AI Tip Sheets feature uses AI to search through all of this data, looking for anomalies, such as a change in voting position tied to a large campaign contribution. These anomalies appear on a webpage that journalists can access to give them story ideas and a source of data and analysis to drive further reporting. - The Guardian

Why some Couples Endure

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There are many reasons why relationships fail, but if you look at what drives the deterioration of many relationships, it’s often a breakdown of kindness. As the normal stresses of a life together pile up—with children, career, friend, in-laws, and other distractions crowding out the time for romance and intimacy—couples may put less effort into their relationship and let the petty grievances they hold against one another tear them apart. In most marriages, levels of satisfaction drop dramatically within the first few years together. But among couples who not only endure, but live happily together for years and years, the spirit of kindness and generosity guides them forward.

Emily Esfahani Smith writing in The Atlantic

Toxicity is harder for AI to fake than intelligence

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"The next time you encounter an unusually polite reply on social media, you might want to check twice. It could be an AI model trying (and failing) to blend in with the crowd. A new study reveals that AI models remain easily distinguishable from humans in social media conversations, with overly friendly emotional tone serving as the most persistent giveaway. Also, the AI models struggled to match the level of casual negativity and spontaneous emotional expression common in human social media posts." -ArsTechnica

The Perfect Parent Trap

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When perfectionists become parents, their mindsets don't change; they just shift their unreasonable expectations onto their children. Now their kids must be perfect too. In fact, a number of studies have found that perfectionists are so busy worrying about the drive for excellence that they aren't sensitive are responsive to the children's real needs.

Perfectionist parenting is anxious parenting. So that their children never make mistakes, these parents are overprotective, controlling, authoritarian, intrusive and dominating.

(Not that any of it helps: Research at Macquarie University in Australia showed that perfectionist parents’ tendencies to admonish kids and emphasize accuracy didn't decrease errors in children's work.)

Unsurprisingly kids of perfectionists are perfectionists too, adopting the same unreasonable expectations and exaggerated responses to failure. As a result, they're more likely to be anxious and obsessive. According to the University of Louisville researchers Nicholas Affrunti and Janet Woodriff-Borden, every time parents rush into fix something their kids learn their mistakes of threatening and they come to believe they can't be trusted to handle new experiences on the run.

And through their parents’ disengagement, kids learn that love is conditional. The only way to get it? Achieve.

Ashley Merryman, co-author of Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing

30 Recent Articles about the Impact of AI on Health Care

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Woman Scammed by Ad With Deepfake of Her Doctor – NBC’s Today Show

What the next generation of doctors needs to know about AI – WBUR  

AI Accurately Predicts Complication Risk After Kidney Cancer Surgery – Cancer Nursing Today

AI fails to reliably detect pediatric pneumonia on X-ray – Univ of Wisconsin Medicine 

People Are Uploading Their Medical Records to A.I. Chatbots – New York Times

Instead of an AI Health Coach, You Could Just Have Friends – Wired

The AI model that uses sounds like coughs & sniffles to predict early signs of disease – Mashable

The right place for AI companions in mental health care – Stat News

We found what you’re asking ChatGPT about health. A doctor scored its answers. – Washington Post

How AI can monitor your movements to improve your health – Fast Company

The perils of politeness: how large language models may amplify medical misinformation – Nature

How conspiracy theories infiltrated the doctor’s office - MIT Technology Review

Microsoft launches 'superintelligence' team targeting medical diagnosis to start – Reuters

AI steps in to detect the world's deadliest infectious disease – NPR

Evaluating the performance of large language models versus human researchers on real world complex medical queries – Nature

Agentic AI advantage for pharma - Mckinsey

5 Tips When Consulting ‘Dr.’ ChatGPT – New York Times

AI May Be the Cure for Doctor Burnout, After All – Newsweek

Answering your questions about using AI as a health care guide – Washington Post

RTP startup uses AI to fight health insurance denials – Axios

OpenEvidence, the ChatGPT for doctors, raises $200M at $6B valuation – TechCrunch

Low-quality papers are flooding the cancer literature — can this AI tool help to catch them? – Nature

New AI-powered model predicts which children are most at risk of developing sepsis—when the immune system overreacts to an infection—within 48 hours of an emergency room visit – Northwestern

How AI is taking over every step of drug discovery -  Chemical & Engineering News

Coalition for Health AI faces escalating attacks by Trump officials, loss of founding member Amazon – StatNews

Empathetic, Available, Cheap: When A.I. Offers What Doctors Don’t – New York Times

How AI scribes could usher in higher medical bills - StatNews

Academic misconduct and artificial intelligence use by medical students, interns and PhD students in Ukraine: a cross-sectional study – Springer

Review of Large Language Models for Patient and Caregiver Support in Cancer Care Delivery – ASCO  

A Prompt Engineering Framework for Large Language Model-Based Mental Health Chatbots: Conceptual Framework– PubMed

Majoring in AI

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Why major in computer science when you can major in artificial intelligence? From the NYT: At MIT, a new program called “artificial intelligence and decision-making” has become the second most popular major. At the University of California, San Diego, 150 first-year students signed up for a new AI program. The State University of New York at Buffalo has created a stand-alone “department of AI and society.” More than 3,000 students enrolled in a new college of AI & cybersecurity at the University of South Florida.