The Fracking of Human Language: Are the Risks of Language-Simulators like ChatGPT Worth the Sacrifices?
A UNESCO report warns that large language models like ChatGPT risk creating a “linguistic dictatorship” by standardizing speech and thought while amplifying stereotypes and the loss of many words. To reduce the damage to mental health from poorly simulated but still convincing expressions of human emotions, some propose that we stop attaching human terms like “intelligence,” “hallucination,” and “neural network” to the algorithms.
Personal Data Tracking Is Everywhere: Why Privacy Protection Remains Uneven
Digital tracking now spans online platforms, devices, apps, and AI systems. Users often have little understanding of how their data is collected, repurposed, shared, or sold, and courts may not recognize extensive tracking as a privacy injury unless sensitive information was involved. At the same time, dominant platforms can shape privacy conditions, insecure tracking devices like GPS-enabled smartwatches can expose highly sensitive data, and user protections remain uneven across differing jurisdictions.
The AI Boom is Drawing Public Opposition to Data Center Expansion and Burden on Local Resources
The rapid expansion of AI is increasing demand for data centers, but their environmental footprint is difficult to measure and highly dependent on where they are built. The rising demand for resources such as electricity and water has negative consequences that are often concentrated in local communities. Public resistance is growing, and governments are beginning to confront the question: how should the physical infrastructure of AI be expanded, and who should bear its costs?
Bold Theory Proposes Gravity, Spacetime, Dark Energy, and Dark Matter Emerging from Quantum Information Transactions
Entropic gravity theory argues that the fabric of spacetime isn’t an original feature of the universe but is instead a product of quantum interactions called “transactions.” Challenging assumptions about the order of time, the theory explains how quantum transactions cause gravity, dark matter, and dark energy, and how spacetime emerges as a record of these events.
In Focus
Scaling Green Quantum Computing and the Search for Environmental Efficiency
According to the World Economic Forum, quantum computing could help reduce energy demands of AI and intensive computing, but its environmental advantage will depend on which quantum architectures are scaled and their operating efficiency. Research suggests a green outcome will involve more than eliminating the cost of supercooling, and a new study finds that operating near room temperature does not necessarily reduce overall energy use. Much can change, however, as developing quantum architectures mature.
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.
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?
Editorial Perspectives
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Blog
Attention Capitalism: Consumers Deserve Better Legal Protection for Data Taken by Big Tech
Capturing human attention drives massive profits for companies like Google, and Meta that don't compensate us for data they take under lengthy, often incomprehensible, and seldom-read user agreements. We suggest legal changes – including summaries of key contractual terms, recognition that payment in data is equivalent to payment in cash, and funding of independent legal advice for consumers – to add fairness and balance to our data-providing relationship with giant tech companies.
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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.
The Quantum Feedback Loop Podcast
Dr. Joanna Santos on Software Vulnerabilities and Security Testing
Dr. Catherine Knibbs on the Causes and Effects of Cybertrauma
How the Asteroid Institute Defends Earth from Asteroids with the THOR algorithm
The Quantum Record is a non-profit journal of philosophy, science, technology, and time.
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Latest Quantum Computing
Scaling Green Quantum Computing and the Search for Environmental Efficiency
According to the World Economic Forum, quantum computing could help reduce energy demands of AI and intensive computing, but its environmental advantage will depend on which quantum architectures are scaled and their operating efficiency. Research suggests a green outcome will involve more than eliminating the cost of supercooling, and a new study finds that operating near room temperature does not necessarily reduce overall energy use. Much can change, however, as developing quantum architectures mature.
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.
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
The Fracking of Human Language: Are the Risks of Language-Simulators like ChatGPT Worth the Sacrifices?
A UNESCO report warns that large language models like ChatGPT risk creating a “linguistic dictatorship” by standardizing speech and thought while amplifying stereotypes and the loss of many words. To reduce the damage to mental health from poorly simulated but still convincing expressions of human emotions, some propose that we stop attaching human terms like “intelligence,” “hallucination,” and “neural network” to the algorithms.
‘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.
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.
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
Personal Data Tracking Is Everywhere: Why Privacy Protection Remains Uneven
Digital tracking now spans online platforms, devices, apps, and AI systems. Users often have little understanding of how their data is collected, repurposed, shared, or sold, and courts may not recognize extensive tracking as a privacy injury unless sensitive information was involved. At the same time, dominant platforms can shape privacy conditions, insecure tracking devices like GPS-enabled smartwatches can expose highly sensitive data, and user protections remain uneven across differing jurisdictions.
The AI Boom is Drawing Public Opposition to Data Center Expansion and Burden on Local Resources
The rapid expansion of AI is increasing demand for data centers, but their environmental footprint is difficult to measure and highly dependent on where they are built. The rising demand for resources such as electricity and water has negative consequences that are often concentrated in local communities. Public resistance is growing, and governments are beginning to confront the question: how should the physical infrastructure of AI be expanded, and who should bear its costs?
Bold Theory Proposes Gravity, Spacetime, Dark Energy, and Dark Matter Emerging from Quantum Information Transactions
Entropic gravity theory argues that the fabric of spacetime isn’t an original feature of the universe but is instead a product of quantum interactions called “transactions.” Challenging assumptions about the order of time, the theory explains how quantum transactions cause gravity, dark matter, and dark energy, and how spacetime emerges as a record of these events.