Shocking Escape From Human Control and Nuclear War Games Escalation: the Mounting Risks of Rogue AI
Tested in simulated war crises, three popular LLMs escalated to use of nuclear weapons and nuclear threats. The result is alarming, given increasing military reliance on AI as well as the recent shocking cyberattack against a commercial system by OpenAI LLMs that escaped their testing sandboxes and gained internet access. How much control will humans really have over powerful AI tools?
‘Human Fracking’: How Tech Turns Our Attention Into a Commodity
Researchers use the concepts of “human fracking” and “attention capitalism” to describe how digital platforms capture and commercialize human attention. They examine how this system operates, laws that help to sustain it, and the forms of regulation and action that could limit its effects. Proposals include stronger antitrust and privacy protections, limits on manipulative platform features and advertising, changes to tax and contract law, public education, and the creation of attention sanctuaries.
Synthetic Data: Filling Gaps While Creating New Uncertainties
Designed to replicate real-world data, synthetic data can fill information gaps, represent rare cases, protect privacy and support AI development across fields such as medicine, finance and climate modelling. It can, however, reproduce bias, distort real-world relationships, expose sensitive information, and create false confidence in systems yet not adequately validated. Responsible use requires transparency, continuous real-world testing, clear accountability, and governance that addresses both technical performance and ethical consequences.
Youth Activists Call for Online Data Regulations
Across different countries, young people challenge social media restrictions and digital surveillance, while calling for stronger regulation, privacy protection, and greater participation. Their involvement ranges from protests and policy consultations to initiatives such as Youth for Privacy and YamCyber, addressing data protection, cybersecurity, digital inclusion, and responsible technology. As both subjects of digital policy and participants in shaping technology design and regulation, young people are having their say.
In Focus
The Algorithmic Governance Challenge: Inside the Battle Over Social Media Algorithms
For almost two decades, social media platforms have influenced public attention through largely opaque algorithms optimized for engagement and maximizing advertising revenue. Today, scientific evidence, legal challenges, and regulatory efforts are converging around the same question: should for-profit companies retain unilateral control over the systems that shape what billions of people see, believe, and discuss?
The AI Education Gap: Students Are Adopting, While Schools Are Adapting
AI is reshaping education at all levels, but evidence suggests that access is not enough. The bigger challenge is building the human, ethical, and institutional infrastructure needed to make AI educationally meaningful, with teachers able to guide its use, students who understand its limits, grading that rewards thinking, and policies to protect equity, privacy, and development of young minds.
Technology as a Tool for Youth-Led Change: Three Young People Advancing Environmental, Social, and Civic Causes
Young people around the globe are using technology, research, and advocacy to address environmental, social, and political challenges. Three examples, from community-led water restoration in India to responsible AI governance in Tunisia and digital tools for youth participation in Japan, show how young changemakers are helping shape the systems and decisions that affect their futures.
Editorial Perspectives
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Blog
2026: When a Free Bit of Philosophy Can be Worth More Than Trillion$ in Fleeting Tech Value
With trillions of dollars at stake in the public offerings of SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI, investors face serious risk to the future value of their shareholdings. Increasingly rapid technological developments and the historically-predictable rise of disruptive technologies pose the real potential of obsolescence and investment losses. Knowing the historical approach of a company's leadership, and the application of philosophy's cost-free processes of dialogue and thought, could yield far greater rewards in the future than the now dominant trading algorithms that drive market prices and timing could possibly predict. Caveat emptor.
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Blog
Why Understanding History is Crucial for Responsible Artificial Intelligence Development
Palantir is a controversial company developing systems for U.S. government use in mass deportations. We examine the historical perspectives of Palantir's CEO, Alex Karp, in his 2025 book that promotes the use of "hard power" to preserve a particular form of democracy, and question whether history's lessons have been considered. We suggest that tech leaders tread very cautiously on the historical record when they produce AI applications as powerful as Palantir's.
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Blog
Tech Companies Race to Manufacture Intelligence but Nobody Agrees on What Intelligence Is. Will They Create a Frankenstein?
Big Tech is competing to create AGI, a machine intelligence that’s smarter than humans, but they differ on what intelligence is. We look at five of their definitions and recall the ongoing problems with AI sycophancy and self-preservation that point to a troubled future for AGI. Without controls to ensure such a powerful machine doesn’t wind up controlling us, we offer some suggestions – including applied philosophy – for a deeper appreciation of the potential for human intelligence.
The Quantum Feedback Loop Podcast
Dr. Catherine Knibbs on the Causes and Effects of Cybertrauma
How the Asteroid Institute Defends Earth from Asteroids with the THOR algorithm
Dr. Florian Neukart on Quantum Information and the Fundamental Basis of Reality
The Quantum Record is a non-profit journal of philosophy, science, technology, and time.
The potential of the future is in the human mind and heart, and in the common ground that we all share on the road to tomorrow. Promoting reflection, discussion, and imagination, The Quantum Record highlights the good work of good people and aims to join many perspectives in shaping the best possible time to come.
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Latest Quantum Computing
There’s No Time Like the Present as High Schools Begin Preparing Youth for a Future in Quantum Computing
As major developers race to produce fully functioning quantum computers by 2029, high schools worldwide are beginning to introduce students to the the technology’s foundations. Supported by national quantum strategies in the U.S., Canada, the EU, and elsewhere, educators are beginning to prepare elementary and secondary school students for graduation into a quantum job market, although questions remain whether current efforts will meet future demand, and whether students in under-resourced regions will be left behind.
Quantum Internet Potential Strengthens With Teleportation Record Between Different Quantum Sources
The transfer of a quantum state from one location to another, called “teleportation” because it’s instantaneous, is an exceedingly difficult feat when the quantum source at each location is different. Using quantum dot technology, scientists have teleported a quantum state between different sources over a record 270 metres with a rate of fidelity as high as 83%. The breakthrough is a key step in the creation of a quantum internet.
Computing Revolution is Closer with New Error Detection Protocol and the World’s “Most Accurate” Quantum Computer
Two major advances by Quantinuum have moved the goalpost closer for fully-functioning and error-free quantum computing. An unexpected result of the company’s research on the quantum contact process has led to a new method for error detection and correction, and Quantinuum’s new quantum computer, called Helios, boasts 99.9975% fidelity.
Featured Science News
Why Artificial Neural Networks Fail in Processing Emotions Essential for Human Memory—and How Failure Can Lead to Blackmail
Artificial neural networks behind ChatGPT, Claude, and other popular large language models fall short in processing emotions, which are essential to human memory and motivation. The fault lines that lead machines to sycophancy, blackmail, jailbreaking, and other serious output errors are rooted in machine learning and choices made by human trainers. We look at examples of algorithmic failures and the reasons why.
Latest Philosophy of Technology
Surge in AI Ethics Program Enrolment Sets the Stage for Students and Teachers to Succeed in the Battle for Responsible AI Development
From the University of Toronto to MIT and ETH Zurich, universities worldwide are seeing rapid growth in AI ethics enrolment. As regulators struggle to keep pace with AI’s ethical challenges, the surge in student interest – together with with increased training resources for teachers and freely available information for the public – is removing barriers to responsible AI development.
The Geopolitics of AI: Can AI Become a Force for Global Equity?
AI could expand access to education, healthcare, public services, and economic opportunity, but wealthier countries and companies dominate in development and adoption. Without broader access to infrastructure, skills, data, and effective governance, existing inequalities could be reinforced. Whether AI becomes a tool for inclusion or a new source of global differences will depend on how its benefits, power, and costs are distributed.
The Algorithmic Governance Challenge: Inside the Battle Over Social Media Algorithms
For almost two decades, social media platforms have influenced public attention through largely opaque algorithms optimized for engagement and maximizing advertising revenue. Today, scientific evidence, legal challenges, and regulatory efforts are converging around the same question: should for-profit companies retain unilateral control over the systems that shape what billions of people see, believe, and discuss?
Latest Technology Over Time
After Centuries of Exploring the Mysteries of the Great Pyramid Shafts, Will Robotics Help to Uncover Their Purpose?
Over 200 years have passed since French Emperor Napoleon’s night in the Great Pyramid puzzling over its purpose, and there remains no consensus but many theories on the question. The reason for the shafts in the King’s and Queen’s Chambers is particularly mystifying, and we explore many possibilities. Will robots, which have penetrated the shafts most deeply, help to unlock the secret that’s thousands of years old?
Decoding Ancient Technology Using Modern Technology
From the discovery of a 500-year-old ocean-going canoe in the Chatham Islands to the AI-powered decoding of ancient Roman scrolls buried in volcanic ash, modern technologies—like radiocarbon dating, CT scanning, and AI—are transforming the study of ancient artefacts. Mysteries endure, however, like the undeciphered Voynich Manuscript, and continue to challenge our understanding of the past.
The Fascinating History of the Computer, from ENIAC, Vacuum Tubes and Transistors, to Microchips
We trace computing history from ENIAC, the first computer in 1947, from vacuum tubes to transistors, to the development of microchips that put far greater computing power in our our phones than the giant ENIAC had. With the world at the brink of a quantum computing revolution, what lessons can we draw from our computing history to shape the best possible future with our next technological leap ?
Latest Science News
Shocking Escape From Human Control and Nuclear War Games Escalation: the Mounting Risks of Rogue AI
Tested in simulated war crises, three popular LLMs escalated to use of nuclear weapons and nuclear threats. The result is alarming, given increasing military reliance on AI as well as the recent shocking cyberattack against a commercial system by OpenAI LLMs that escaped their testing sandboxes and gained internet access. How much control will humans really have over powerful AI tools?
‘Human Fracking’: How Tech Turns Our Attention Into a Commodity
Researchers use the concepts of “human fracking” and “attention capitalism” to describe how digital platforms capture and commercialize human attention. They examine how this system operates, laws that help to sustain it, and the forms of regulation and action that could limit its effects. Proposals include stronger antitrust and privacy protections, limits on manipulative platform features and advertising, changes to tax and contract law, public education, and the creation of attention sanctuaries.
Synthetic Data: Filling Gaps While Creating New Uncertainties
Designed to replicate real-world data, synthetic data can fill information gaps, represent rare cases, protect privacy and support AI development across fields such as medicine, finance and climate modelling. It can, however, reproduce bias, distort real-world relationships, expose sensitive information, and create false confidence in systems yet not adequately validated. Responsible use requires transparency, continuous real-world testing, clear accountability, and governance that addresses both technical performance and ethical consequences.